There's a Word for It in Mexico
Here's a nifty idea for a book for both Spanish language students and for people interested in Mexico. Author De Mente has found an effective way to reach both groups with a volume that takes a studious and careful look at 130 key words in Spanish and has written a couple of pages on each one. In the process, the reader is treated to a variety of knowledgeable tours through Mexican history and sociology and customs that would be hard to find elsewhere.
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Comments on book reviews of Travel Advisory
Although no writer likes to feel that he or she has been read carelessly, or misread entirely, it's a dubious proposition for any of us to respond to any negative criticism that our books have received...
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Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico
For some years now, those of us norteamericanos who live in Mexico and sometimes love it, have read with some rueful cynicism the reports of assorted writers who've dipped into Mexico. And missed. It w...
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Mexican Voices, American Dreams: An oral history of Mexican immigration to the United States
Mexican immigration into the U.S. represents "the greatest migration of people in the history of humanity." The author estimates that some 5 million legal Mexican immigrants reside in the U.S. plus there's a further 2 million illegal immigrants also in the country.
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Reader Advisory: A review of Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico
This is not a book about Mexico. Its stories could take place on Long Island or Pittsburgh just as easily. As a Mexican resident, I'm offended, and I'm angry. What if someone wrote a handful of short stories about pedophiles, predators, and perverts in Williamsburg and called it "Stories of the Hassidim?"
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On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel
"My editor wanted me to write about life here in the region where we live. At that time, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Querétero ranked a page or two each in the guide books, day stops or overnighters on a tour of the ‘silver cities,’ the subject of an occasional tourist piece in a Sunday travel section, the ‘charming little town hidden away in the Mexican mountains.’ Don’t put a gloss on it, the editor said. Tell what life is really like, the good and the bad. Tell the truth a good fiction writer knows.”
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Mexico's Lake Chapala And Ajijic
Mexico’s Lake Chapala and Ajijic: The Insiders Guide to the Northshore for International Travelers by Teresa A. Kendrick is a comprehensive 170-plus page guide to one of the most sought-after destina...
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Zen and the art of Mexican Living
In 1985, during a grim time in L.A., Tony Cohan, a respected novelist, fled with his Japanese-American wife, Masako Takahashi, an artist and photographer, to a little town in the mountains in central M...
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Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
Here's a rather odd novel from the author of "The Bridges of Madison Country" and "Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend". I've always thought of Waller as a writer of romances, going only by the titles of his books. This one, however, is a quite suspenseful "chase" story - complete with a rather bloody ending - as well as being a travelogue of at least one area of Mexico. The two leading characters are rather unlikely people to be involved in such a tale.
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Mexico Travelers' Tales
This is one of the really superior anthologies of articles and stories about Mexico. It's made up of some 48 items about the country taken from a wide variety of sources. And they're almost all interesting. The topics cover the gamut of attractions and delights from a dissertation on mariachis to Carlos Fuentes' essay on Mexico City's main square.
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Mexico, a Higher Vision: An Aerial Journey from Past to Present by Michael Calderwood
This is the first coffee-table book I ever reviewed and I have to say right off the bat that it's a winner. It is made up of some 200 photographs from all parts of Mexico - all of them taken from a high elevation, either an aircraft or mountaintop or, occasionally, a tall building. At first it sounds like a rather limited concept but in execution the "godlike" perspective works beautifully to highlight the uniqueness of this country. What this handsome volume delivers is a treasure trove of striking views of deserts, cities, villages, volcanoes, mountain ranges, desolate beaches, crowded beaches, jungles, individual buildings and other striking images. We look down on huge elaborate temple ruins in the midst of lush jungle or on abandoned haciendas in arid desert country, as well as on vast populated modern cities and luxury resorts.
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Mornings in Mexico by D. H. Lawrence
I should confess right off the bat that this one is out of print. Amazon.com doesn’t have any copies. However, I’m sure it’s still available in libraries or used bookstores. In any case, it’s worth looking for. It’s a collection of essays and travel pieces that resulted from Lawrence’s visits to Mexico and New Mexico in the early 1920s. Some wonderful descriptive writing is to be found here.
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The People's Guide to Mexico, 25th Anniversary Edition
“This book is about Mexico - about living, travelling and taking things as they come in a foreign country. It’s about driving conditions and health and how to cross the border. It’s about drinking the water without getting sick… It’s not about which hotels to stay in or the most interesting villages to visit. The purpose of the book is to teach you how to find out those things for yourself.”
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Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California by Bruce Berger
Bruce Berger is an excellent guide to the Baja. He’s been going there since the mid '60s, having driven the length of the peninsula at least three times when that meant travelling more than 1,000 kilometers of single lane dirt road. One could drive for a day and meet only one other car. And you would never dream of leaving without taking plenty of food, water and gasoline plus whatever extras and spare parts you might need to fix auto problems along the way.
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Rolfe Schell at the gates of Tulum
"The great landscapes all belong to a tomorrow we have already lived."
Fernando Pessoa, Livro do Desassossego
I collect old books. There's no more fun for me than to forage through secondh...
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The Reader's Companion to Mexico
This is an odd volume. I originally bought it because it advertises itself as "a gathering of some of the best travel writing ever" about Mexico. However, you quickly find as you dip into it that not all the articles are about travel. Also, very few of them have been written in recent times. Indeed, a couple were written about 100 years ago. However, that's not a criticism.
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All booked up: Guidebooks enhance the Mexican travel experience
"Mexico is an endless journey," the Tourism Secretariat boasts. Most visitors will need a roadmap. Fortunately, a plethora of guidebooks are available purporting to show you the way. New editions of cl...
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Live Better South of the Border and Spas and Hot Springs of Mexico
Visiting Mexico is one thing. Living here is another. Basking amid sweet breezes and swaying palms, marimba rhythms, strains of Eres Tu, and romantic vistas, the tourist's Mexico is temporary, amid room-serviced luxury or experiential trysts with simple-pleasured paradise. For most of us, neither is an option for a permanent lifestyle. Reality lands, bringing mundane concerns and excess baggage of money, medical care, reliable phone service, the mail, and nearly every other aspect of Peoria as home becomes Mexico.
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From Taxco to Cacaxtla, Oaxaca to Xalapa, Huamantla to the Tuxtlas -- for those who love travel, Mexico offers a virtually endless succession of places to visit, and with sun-splashed beaches, spectacu...
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Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S. - Mexico Border by Sebastian Rotella Norton
The action never stops at the border. There is no other place like it on the globe. The international boundary stretches for almost two thousand miles, from the Pacific Ocean through the mountains, the deserts, the valleys of the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. The region is a vast world unto itself. And the westernmost, fourteen-mile strip between San Diego and Tijuana, the border's biggest and richest cities, is the most intense microcosm of that world. The U.S. Border Patrol records half a million yearly arrests of illegal immigrants here, accounting for almost half of all its arrests.
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