"In her scholarly but often fascinating study, Schwartz examines the changing ideas of leisure and recreation in Havana, the 'Paris of the Antilles' to which U.S. tourists thronged for its forbidden enticements and never-ending cabaret. Schwartz's report is heavily tinged with politics, of course, but high spirits and nostalgia also seep from its pages."-Miami Herald. "A well-researched description of tourism in Cuba, mainly from the Twenties to the Sixties. The emphasis is on American tourists, the most numerous until Castro, and the history is chronological, showing how World Wars I and II...

In this book, author Rosalie Schwartz uses the 1933 RKORadio Pictures production Flying Down to Rio to examine the interplay of technology and popular culture that shaped a distinctive twentiethcentury sensibility. The musical comedy connected airplanes, movies, and tourism, ending spectacularly with chorus girls dancing on the wings of airplanes high above Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Hollywood fantasy capped three decades during which airplanes and movies engendered new expectations and redefined peoples sense of wellbeing, their personal satisfactions, and their interpersonal...