SIX DAYS IN HAVANA

Over 150 color photos brighten this breezy account by Michener and longtime assistant Kings (who took most of the pictures) of their recent trip to Cuba to research the novelist's latest tome (Caribbean, p. 1192). Michener contributes a long essay about the trip, bookended by short essays by Kings and all laid out so that the myriad photos illustrate their proximate text. That text trades mightily in Michneresque melodrama (a typical subtitle is "My fairy-tale flight to Cuba," leading to a description of the 38-minute flight from Miama to Havana, a brevity of travel that Michener finds "staggering"). Still, steering clear of politics and concentrating on the human-interest aspects of their trip—people met (not Castro, but many working classers plus novelist Pablo Armando Fernandez); buildings admired (including Hemingway's house); and stores and restaurants and concerts patronized—the authors give a fair flavor of Havanan daily life. Even more telling, though, are the excellent photographs, brimming with glorious pastels and sun-bred spirit.