ALL THE BEST IN THE CARIBBEAN, INCLUDING PUERTO RICO AND THE VIRGIN ISLANDS.

By SydneyClark '12. New York: Dodd, Mead &Company, 1969.461 pp.With maps andillustrations. $6.95.

Based on several visits totaling months of research on almost every island big and little, including Surinam, this volume, unlike earlier editions, concentrates on the true Caribbean. Owing to political upheavals, travel currents have changed radically in the past half-dozen years. Cuba is out. In are Puerto Rico, expecting a million tourists a year, and the Virgin Islands - 300 cruises each season with St. Thomas the number one cruise in the Caribbean. Even midsummer Caribbean vacations win favor among North Americans who realize that Caribbean summers are sunnier and, in many seaside areas, cooler than in the States. Jamaica is becoming increasingly popular, and even the Dominican Republic, which in 1961 began to awake from the Trujillo delirium tremens, and Haiti, impoverished and prostrated, are beginning to attract tourists.

Mr. Clark has omitted Bermuda and the Bahamas, covered in a separate "All the Best" book, but Puerto Rico and the Virgins are included in both volumes. Cuba is completely deleted. Of the three Guineas, only the Dutch, now called Surinam, interests American travelers, and it is given 28 pages.

The tremendous variety of the Caribbean is appropriately emphasized. The dozens and scores of islands are as variegated as the scenery and the natives with skins a spectrum from pale to jet black and with eyes all the way from round Teutonic to Oriental slits vanishing completely in laughtenatives who speak four languages and many dialects.

In print and in illustrations you will be informed how honeymoon couples sip milk from one coconut, a dancer wriggles under a limbo bar one foot above the floor, Grenada produces one third of all the world's nutmegs, bush Negro men in Paramaribo wearing only loin cloths and Negro women only a small apron meet planes, one goes rafting on the Rio Grande, Jamaicans climb coco palms with squirrel-like ease, and nonnatives behave in night clubs bohemian and deluxe.

Such are the romantic attractions. Vitally important are Mr. Clark's complementary and judicious remarks about languages and allegiances, easy-to-use maps, passports and vaccination certificates, clothes and luggage, money and tipping, free-port shops and customs, food and drink, weather and illness, airmail and gasoline.