"Havana knew me by my shoes," begins Tom Miller's extraordinary and exuberant account of more than seven months traveling through Cuba, from coastal cities to mountain villages, from the Bay of Pigs to both sides of the fence at Guantanamo, mixing with its literati and black marketeers, its cane cutters and cigar rollers, its musicians and its athletes. Granted unprecedented access to travel virtually wherever and interview whomever he chose, Miller presents us with a rare, detailed look at life in one of the world's last Communist countries and one of America's closest neighbors. Trading with the Enemy takes its title from the U.S. law restricting contact between Americans and Cubans and goes a long way toward remedying that unfortunate situation.Miller begins his discerning and entertaining travelogue on the Malecon, the broad seaside thoroughfare that gives Havana its identity and character. Ranging out from there, Miller listens carefully and well, bringing us conversations with some of Cuba's best-known personalities - a cook whose television show has lasted since the days of Batista and a comedian whose loyalty to the Revolution dictates his material - as well as ordinary citizens standing in line for bread at the Socialism or Death Bakery or for the world-famous ice cream at Coppelia Park. They talk to him about the United States, they retell their favorite jokes about Fidel, and point with pride to the site of Columbus's landing in the New World - if only they could agree on its exact location.So enthralled is Miller by these spirited people and the often glorious landscapes he encounters that, he writes, while driving through the province of Pinar del Rio, "I was so happy I threw my head back and started to sing the final rousing chorus of 'Oklahoma!'" And his enthusiasm sweeps the reader along, too, as Miller provides a running commentary on the island's music, food, drink, bestseller lists, religion, and baseball, as he follows the scent of Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, and the Mambo Kings, and as he interprets the omnipresent memorials to Jose Marti, the father of Cuban independence. The result of his informed and adventurous journey is a vibrant, pungent, and rhythmic portrait of a land and a people who have been too long shielded from American eyes. Read Less