It's now somewhat synonymous with decay of both a socioeconomic and physical nature, but there was a time before the Socialist revolution when Havana was known as the "Paris of the Caribbean," a place where Americans came to hang out in nightclubs, gamble, smoke cigars, hit on showgirls and drink copious quantities of rum. This prelapsarian paradise is celebrated in Peter Moruzzi's brilliant new book, Havana Before Castro: When Cuba Was a Tropical Playground (Gibbs Smith, $30), filled with hundreds of photos, brochures, postcards, artifacts and other ephemera.

From Hemingway hangout La Floridita, where the daiquiris flowed like water, especially during Prohibition, to the Tropicana and other casinos that were cutting edge in the 1950s thanks to the interest of American mobsters, Moruzzi provides a gorgeous and engaging glimpse of an all but forgotten era. See the gallery for a preview.

[via Men.Style]

A luxe new coffee table book called Dream Homes: Coastal California (Panache Partners, $34.95) showcases over 40 of the region's finest architects, designers and builders. Focusing on Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey Counties, it features 250 photographs of breathtaking designs such as the Villa Beaumont pictured above, an Italian-Renaissance country villa in Santa Barbara by Sorrell Design based on the work of the great 16th-century architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola. From multimillion dollar classical revival mansions to modernist beach dwellings, no expense has been spared in realizing clients' dreams (hence the title). See the gallery for a tour.

Super cool movie star Steve McQueen was without a doubt one of the most stylish men of all time. As we've noted in the past, his rugged sportiness, authentic masculinity and innate good taste have inspired countless fashion designers, not to mention scores of other actors who followed in his wake. McQueen fans of all sorts have a lot to celebrate this summer: there are two major new books on the "King of Cool" coming out, as well as a special McQueen tribute edition Ford Mustang, while the star's famous 1970 Porsche, worth an estimated $2 million, is going up for auction.

The first book just went on sale: Steve McQueen: A Life in Pictures edited by Yann Brice Dherbier (Pavilion, $40). The mix of classic and less well-known images of the style icon is artfully put together, but what struck us most about the book was its large format, showing details that you just don't get in smaller versions (see the gallery for a preview). For instance, in this cover image you can clearly see that McQueen is wearing a classic Baracuta jacket from England - which by the way are still sold here at Ben Silver in Charleston, one of the best men's clothiers in the country.

Equally striking and noticeable due to the impressive scale are the identifiable images which have clearly influenced designers like Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors who have built whole collections and ad campaigns around the King of Cool. Lauren in particular is a well-known McQueen fanatic. The index to Michael Gross' brilliant biography of the designer, Genuine Authentic, contains no less than six separate entries for the actor.

Gross writes that Lauren staged shoots based on McQueen's movies - his favorite film is said to be 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair - sometimes with himself in the starring role, and hung photos of the actor in both his houses and stores. If you look closely enough at the photos in Dherbier's book and compare them to Lauren's designs you can see where he copied sweaters, jackets, details on suits, even the carelessly elegant way McQueen always wore his clothes.

The other book, Unforgettable Steve McQueen hasn't been published yet - we'll update you on that when the time comes - but it features a foreword by another McQueen wannabe: Brad Pitt. We'd say he's making a good start at filling the King of Cool's shoes, but he's got a ways to go yet.

Followers of my sporadic style posts here have probably noticed certain threads running throughout; anglophilia, certainly, but also an affinity for all things equestrian-related: the polo matches staged by the likes of Veuve Clicquot and Mercedes-Benz; the Royal Ascot Races; riding boots by John Lobb of London; leathergoods by Swaine Adeney Brigg; and even classic sporting art. All these elements and more come together beautifully in Vicky Moon's new book Equestrian Style: Home Design, Couture, and Collections from the Eclectic to the Elegant, due out this week from Clarkson Potter.

It's a magnificent, much-needed extension of the horsey lifestyle portrayed in Hunt Country Style, the book I wrote about back in April. Moon divides her volume into different facts of the equestrian experience: In the Field, On the Farm, At the Track, In the Ring, On the Move, and Down the Road, focusing on all facets of horsiness and everything that goes along with it. The emphasis is on authenticity, not affectation; she barely mentions Ralph Lauren for instance except in the context of the actual polo team he fields.

In November, the Cunard line's famed QE2 will make its final voyage to a new home at the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai World, which paid $100 million to acquire the ship for a floating hotel, retail and entertainment annex. Carol Thatcher has compiled a beautiful book about the legendary oceanliner's colorful history, QE2: Forty Years Famous.

The QE2 was launched by (and named for) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in September 1967, and since then she has undertaken 25 world cruises, crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times and carried more than 2.5 million passengers, establishing a reputation as the world's greatest and most luxurious liner - a grande dame pre-dating and outclassing the modern cruise ship era. See the gallery for more.

We look at lots of photo books in this line of work, but we've rarely been as impressed by one as much as teNeues' massive new Tim Walker monograph. The fact that the Brit fashion photographer's name is not as well known as that of some lesser talents must surely be corrected by the barrage of surreal, sublime images in Tim Walker: Pictures. A former assistant of Richard Avedon's, the 38-year-old obviously learned from the master, but he could hardly be called an Avedon imitator with his flair for elaborate, dreamlike tableaux. An exhibit of Walker's work opened in London last month, but for the $125 this vibrant volume costs you can be transported much further afield. No expense was spared for the extravagant British Vogue holiday shoot pictured above; the magazine even bought the vintage Rolls-Royce in case Walker had to destroy it in order to get the photo just right, as he never uses digital manipulation in his work. See the gallery for more.

[via Men.Style]

Regular Luxist readers will already be familiar with the luxurious, oversized books put out by German publisher teNeues. Not all of their top-drawer coffee table titles are the size of actual coffee tables, however. The travel sized "Cool Hotels" series has all the appeal of the deluxe editions with the added bonus that you can actually take them with you on your journey. They've just released three new additions to the stable in time for summer: Cool Hotels Italy, Cool Hotels Spain, and Cool Hotels Spa & Wellness. At $24.95 apiece, they're considerably less expensive as well. Pictured on the cover of the Italy edition above is the incredibly chic Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amista in Verona, run by the Byblos fashion empire. See the gallery for more stylish vacation spots.

Lake Tahoe, the 22-mile long natural wonder in the Sierra Nevada mountains that's a renowned vacation spot - and site of this amazing Estate of the Day, among others - is the subject of a beautiful new book by photographer Thomas Bachand. Lake Tahoe: A Fragile Beauty (Chronicle Books, $35), features a decade's worth of Bachand's images presenting "a timeless vocabulary of water, rock and sky," as well as "the transition that the lake and its surroundings are undergoing due to tourism and development." Pictured above is a sunset storm at Sugar Pine Point State Park. A must-have for anyone "enchanted by Tahoe's beauty, engaged by its history, and concerned for its welfare," the book goes on sale in a couple of weeks but you can pre-order it on Amazon now.

Whether you are dreaming of a European vacation or something a little closer to home, Travel + Leisure's The World's Greatest Hotels, Resorts and Spas book offers fuel for all your vacation fantasies. The book covers everything from Casa Morada in Islamorada, Florida to Delta Nature Resort along the Danube in Romania. This year's edition includes the usual assortment of gorgeous pictures along with reviews and Travel + Leisure's rankings that include information on prices, service, decor and more. We're giving away two hardcover copies of this beautiful book to two winners at random who tell us about their favorite summer place.


Some other important details:

* To enter, leave a confirmed comment below telling us about your favorite summer place.
* The comment must be left and confirmed before Friday, June 13 at 5:00PM Eastern Time.
* You may only enter once.
* Two winners will be selected in a random drawing.
* Two winners will receive Travel+Leisure (value $34.95 each).
* Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.

See complete contest rules here.

In his preface to Jake Rajs' beautiful new book, Beyond the Dunes: A Portrait of the Hamptons (Monacelli Press, $60), New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger notes the photographer "shows us a vision of the Hamptons at once beautiful and fragile, prosperous but not smug." No easy feat when it comes to portraying such a storied locale, and Rajs manages it magnificently. The book is divided into geographical sections of the South Fork: Westhampton, Quogue and Hampton Bays; Shinnecock and Southampton; Water Mill, Bridgehampton and Sagaponack; Sag Harbor and the Springs; East Hampton and Amagansett; and Montauk (or, as we like to call them: No Money, Old Money, New Money, Some Money, More Money and What Money?). Along the way he finds everything from privet hedges to pumpkin fields and fishermen to polo players. Pictured here is an imposing "cottage" on Southampton's fabled Gin Lane. The book won't be out for another couple of weeks, but you can pre-order it now on Amazon. Meanwhile see the gallery for a preview.

Photo courtesy of teNeues; cover image courtesy Tugu Hotels & Exotic Spas

We've written before about German publisher teNeues's amazing Luxury series; you should know that their Cool series is equally impressive. The latest title in the line, Cool Restaurants: Top of the World, features over 100 incredible eateries scattered around the globe. teNeues selects only the best of the best for their "Top of the World" titles, such as Bale Sutra, the restaurant located in a majestic 300-year-old Kang Xi period temple at the exotic Hotel Tugu in Bali, pictured here on the cover. While New York City has the highest concentration of cool restaurants in any urban locale, and the U.S.A. the most for a single country, Europe has many more continent-wise. Dubai is putting itself on the culinary design map as well, with an admirable showing of four restaurants included in the book - as many as the UK. See the gallery for a tour of some standouts.

Ralph Lauren's flagship store on Madison Avenue (pictured above), aka the Polo Mansion, is probably the most luxurious retail outlet in the world. Not surprisingly, it made Naomi Leff, the interior decorator who created it out of a gutted shell, into a household word in design circles. The Monacelli Press presents a long-overdue compendium of her work in the alluring new book Naomi Leff: Interior Design. "To me it's the most beautiful store in the world," Lauren said upon the Mansion's completion in 1987, "the details, the world it creates, the textures. It's a store that has an emotional impact. I've watched so many people come into it and be dazzled when they enter." Leff went on to design several more stores for Lauren and stunning spaces for Giorgio Armani and private clients as well. See more of her work in the gallery.

Photo by Grant Mudford

The Lone Star State, which was part of Mexico until 1836, is not particularly known for its architectural treasures. There are some amazing estates scattered among its vast tracts, however, as author Lisa Germany and photographer Grant Mudford reveal in their excellent new book, Great Houses Of Texas (Abrams, $50). The Texan landscape -- "combined with the larger-than-life personalities who were drawn to the brutal hardships of the frontier and the architects who designed these extraordinary homes" -- is the unifying theme of the 25 houses, ranging from the intimate to the ornate, collected in the book. Among them is the beautiful Crespi Mansion in Dallas, designed by Swiss architect Maurice Fatio in 1939, pictured above; and the Nowlin House in Austin designed by Paul Lamb in 2002, which was partially based on Mayan ruins. See the gallery for more.

I thought the book "Gotham" was the biggest book on New York city but Gloria Books has it beat with "New York," a giant-sized, 756 page limited-edition book that comes in a Lucite "skyscraper" stand. "Gotham" may still have it beat in page numbers (over 1400 pages) but the New York Books is much heavier, weighing in at 25 pounds. The book is hand-bound in Italian silk and has 33 chapters on all aspects of the city, including history, architecture, design, art & fashion, to music, film, dance and sport. The book includes essays by some of the great writers such as Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, John Updike and many more as well as photography from some of the most famous lenspeople to chronicle the city such as Annie Leibovitz, Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Patrick Demarchelier and David Bailey. The Lenape Edition, named after the first Native American tribe to inhabit New York State, is an edition of 850 units and includes a print by Sam Goldstein from the Corbus Archive. It sells for $2,500.

Photo by Scott Frances / Esto

Every edifice ever built by rationalist architect Richard Meier -- and then some - is featured in a new mega monograph about to be published by Taschen: Richard Meier & Partners: Complete Works 1963-2008. The extra-large $150 volume showcases Meier's entire career to date, including such stunning commissions as the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the City Hall and Library at the Hague and the beauteous Southern California beach house pictured above. Meier, one of the world's top architects - or "starchitects" as he and a select few of his contemporaries such as Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas are known - has an insatiable appetite for large swaths of white, but it works (to say the least). Meier will be at Taschen's New York store to sign copies on June 3rd from 6 - 8 p.m. You can preview the book in the gallery below.