Amongst the new books: Atlas de Cuba

H.N.L. reviews the 1949 Atlas de Cuba by Gerardo Canet with Erwin Raisz, prepared at Harvard’s Institute of Geographical Exploration and published in cooperation with Cuba’s Department of Agriculture. The reviewer praises the creative effort and research behind its coverage of geological development, population, housing, and production, and the effective adaptation of Raisz’s physiographic style to landscape, land use, vegetation, and tourist attractions. Its apparent appeal to tourists alongside school and office users brings shortcomings: incomplete English translations and a crowded bilingual layout. Cheap paper, fuzzy printing, and poor colour registration also impair the maps. Nevertheless, the reviewer judges that the authors largely achieved their aim of portraying Cuban geography vividly and that the informative, decorative wall map folded into the book would alone be worth the atlas’s $3.50 price.