Fatal Revolutions: Natural History, West Indian Slavery, and the Routes of American Literature by Christopher P. Iannini (review)
and have viewed it coundess times with both fascination at the strangeness of it all and shock at the hubris of Corbusian urbanism at its most clueless. It provides much food for hindsight. Strangest among the strange in the Plan Pilota, and a latecomer to the program, is Batista's Presidential Palace. It sits on its own across Havana Bay, sandwiched between two fortresses and backed by an escarpment. This imperial citadel could be locked down, sealed off, and defended in a twinkling. The residence itself represents a feeble attempt at some sort of cubanidad through a hypostyle of white concrete columns developed by Sert with Felix Candela; these were supposed to invoke die bosque of palm trees. However, what reads at best as delicate and light in drawings and model would have inevitably been ponderous at full scale. Any "constitutional" and "civil" intentions were overshadowed by the desires of a dictator client. And one can only wonder "What was Sert thinking?"