LOCAL INTEREST: Six-year-old Manuel Diaz and his mother first arrived at Miami’s airport in 1961 with little more than a dime for a phone call to their relatives living in the Little Havana neighborhood. Forty years after his flight from Castro’s Cuba, attorney Manny Diaz became mayor of the City of Miami. When Diaz took office in 2001, the city was paralyzed by a notoriously corrupt police department, unresponsive government, a dying business district, and heated ethnic and racial divisions. Miami Transformed: Rebuilding America One Neighborhood, One City at a Time (University of Pennsylvania Press, $29.95) chronicles Diaz’s life and his two terms as mayor, years which led to Miami’s transformation into a vibrant, progressive, and economically resurgent world-class metropolis.