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Title: A page-turning read....
Review: You think you've read everything there is to read about Cuba, but you haven't--until you've picked up Tropicana Nights by Rosa Lowinger. This adeptly-written book chronicles the rise and eventual fall of Havana's most glamorous night club. The book follows the lives of its owners, Martin and Ofelia Fox, as they build their "paradise under the stars," with cameos by a veritable who's who of iconic entertainers: Carmen Miranda, Nat King Cole, Josephine Baker and Steve Allen. Woven into the story are sidebars on Cuban music, modernist architecture and regional politics, that, together, come to form a complete picture of Cuban culture in the 1950s. The book also follows Ofelia as she rebuilds her life from scratch in the United States following the Cuban revolution and Martin's death. It's an entertaining, page-turning read with a gripping, personal narrative. And it offers the most striking portrait yet of what it has meant to be Cuban in the twentieth century.
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