Book reviews and notices: Atlas de Cuba

Summary

This is a review of the book "Atlas de Cuba" by Gerardo Canet, with the collaboration of Erwin Raisz, published by Harvard University Press in 1949. The review notes that the atlas, through varied use of colored maps, cartograms, graphs, and pictorial symbols, vividly portrays and evaluates the principal elements, patterns, and trends in Cuba's history, physical geography, production, demographic and social conditions, communications, and trade, making it a valuable aid for teaching and understanding Cuba's cultural geography. The atlas includes running Spanish textual comments accompanied by condensed English translations; however, without a reading knowledge of Spanish, users may find it laborious to translate descriptive captions, legends, and unfamiliar units of measurement. The review also points out minor drawbacks, such as occasional mismatches between legend colors and map colors, and incomplete legends. Overall, the atlas is deemed a reliable and competent work, carefully documented and based on the latest available statistics, and a welcome addition to the limited array of graphic aids for making Latin-American cultural and economic patterns more understandable to the layman.