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Summary: "Why I am Better than Almost Anyone Else," A Summary, March
Review: "Why I am Better than Almost Anyone Else," A Summary, March 11, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from San Diego, CA This review reminded of a bigot with all manner if ill-conceived notions about Mexico. The book in question was not only one of the more well written ones on the subject of living in Mexico but was most accurate. I know because after reading the book my wife and I went there to the city, San Miguel de Allende and verified it for ourselves. We've spent time in the country studying the language and culture. The book was good. The author was good. You should go and see it for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: "Why I am Better than Almost Anyone Else," A Summary, March
Review: "Why I am Better than Almost Anyone Else," A Summary, March 11, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from San Diego, CA This review reminded of a bigot with all manner if ill-conceived notions about Mexico. The book in question was not only one of the more well written ones on the subject of living in Mexico but was most accurate. I know because after reading the book my wife and I went there to the city, San Miguel de Allende and verified it for ourselves. We've spent time in the country studying the language and culture. The book was good. The author was good. You should go and see it for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretentious? !Si!
Review: ...This book is horrid. It strikes a pretentious, patronizing, self-congratulatory tone from the outset and keeps pouring it on... I will simply say that this book, without any alteration at all, could just as easily have been a parody, intended to skewer the NPR-ish, pseudo-artistic, oh-so-sensitive Gringo who jets down to San Miguel and becomes the first white man ever to become One With The People due to his super soulful sensibilities. Yeeech.
Rating: 
Summary: right on time with on mexican time
Review: a deeply thought out book that in an instant makes me want to be in St. Miguel de Allande. (I did at least find it on the map). Conan is not as humorous as Mayle nor does he go quite as indepth over the frustrations of working with contractors and artisans but nevertheless he portrays a lovely picture of his (and his artist wife's) life in Mexico and friends both native and expatriate that fill his days. He hints at but does not tell us reasons why so many nonMexicans flock to St. Miguel. I loved the book.
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Summary: A good description of ¿la vida mexicana¿.
Review: All in all, "On Mexican Time" is a pretty good read if you want to find out a little about living in Mexico and the people (both natives and imports) that you will encounter there. In their fifteen years in San Miguel de Allende Tony and Masako gain a pretty good appreciation for the Mexican way of life. I'm not saying they adopted that way of life because, from beginning to end, they both remained very much norteamericanos (Spanish PC for gringo). I, too, have lived in Mexico and I believe that those of us born north of the border will never fully understand all the elements that make up the Mexican psyche, and visa versa. Who we are, as a culture, is a concatenation of centuries of historical, theological and sociological factors. It is unlikely that any of us can fully understand why another culture acts the way it does. Nevertheless, Cohan aptly portrays the 'sabor' of 'la vida mexicana'. His descriptions of the joys and sorrows of the Mexican nationals and the quirky behavior of the expatriates bring clearly to mind many people I have known. While I haven't been to San Miguel de Allende his description of the city; its streets, shops, festivals and homes, is a very accurate portrayal of many other cities in Mexico. On the down side, he could have done with a lot less about all their shopping. If I read the words 'plaid bolsa' one more time it will be too many. While some description of the differences between our two cultures is in order, I feel like I've just read his entire grocery list for the past 15 years.
Rating: 
Summary: On Mexican Time
Review: As a longtime friend of both San Miguel and Provence, I must agree with the blurb that Cohan equates to Mayle...but only in terms of strong egos and weak apologies for peddling the innocence of their newly beloved countries. Cohan's sophomoric blather, more like assigned reading for High School Spanish 101 than the work of an aged Stanford author,is repetitive,tiringly repetitive and flowery, often self-contradictory and overly righteous...like so many other gringos who, Cortez-like, imagine to discover a virgin and proceed to gloat over its deflowering.
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Summary: The best book I have read in years
Review: Back in the mid 1980s, about the time Tony Cohan and his wife discovered San Miguel de Allende, my wife and I spent six weeks driving through Mexico, becoming enthralled with this land and it's cultures. Since then we have often thought of uprooting and heading south of the border. Our trip didn't take us to San Miguel, though we spent lot of time in nearby Guanajuato and Queretero and other cities of the central highlands. It has never been hard for me to summon an imaginary San Miguel. So when I saw this book I snatched it up. The cover art looks like so many of my photographs from Mexico... ...And I was sucked into Tony Cohan's fabulous writing. I finished the book in three evenings, while nonetheless feeling as though I were languishing in the "sabor" of every paragraph. Cohan's book is not an artsy-fartsy travelogue about San Miguel de Allende. It is a wonderful journal of a life he and his wife have undertaken together. While there is little doubt that the sounds, smells, flavors of classic Mexico richly permeate every page of this book, it is true, too, that the book could have been about a small town in Piedmont Virginia, or the south of France, or anywhere that the frantic and grasping and ultra-"productive" life has not yet conquered all. This book is truly inspriring, and beautifully written. It is just what I needed to remind me to pay attention to life all around me, to love and sensation and contemplation and cockroaches and scorpions and dying vines... Thanks, Mr. Cohan, for letting us into your sojourn. Don't worry...I won't run to St.Miguel and accelerate the gentrification. Instead, I'll look around my home and my yard and my neighbohood and be greatful for my own San Miguel...and for your fine book.
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Summary: Entertaining
Review: Being a regular visitor to San Miguel I was delighted to see that it was the subject of a new book. I found it entertaining and generally consistent with my impression of the town and the kind of people an expatriate or traveler would meet there. The real joy of the town to me is in its eccentricities and beauty, and both of these were captured. Unlike some other reviewers I don't think it should be interpreted as a critique of Mexico and Mexicans but rather a loving memoir of someone who established a lifestyle in a wonderfully different culture. By the way, Tony Cohan and his wife Misako collaborated on another book, Mexicolor, which is a beautiful photographic study of Mexican design and folk art. Many of the pictures are from San Miguel.
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Summary: I loved it!
Review: Being the armchair traveler that I am, and the fact that my husband would rather visit Mexico more than any other spot on Earth, I picked up this book to read why we gringos north of the border are so fascinated with life south of the border. I was not disappointed. Mr. Cohan describes the good along with the not-so-good, the people, the culture, the climate, and the richness of life that one can enjoy when one steps out of the materialistic and secular rat race of life in the States. This book makes me want to learn Spanish, sell my house, and move to San Miguel de Allende!
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Summary: I Came, I Saw, I Figured It Out
Review: Cohan offers a rambling account of how he arrived in San Miguel Allende [one of the most Gringo-Permeated cities in Mexico] and almost without effort glommed on to a series of deep perceptions that allowed him an instantaneous proprietary relationship with the place and its people. In keeping with their deeply-felt attachment to the common people, Cohan and his wife Masako note countless situations in which they find themselves blissfully alike those of two great Mexican plebeians, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Not only that, the artists are chummily know as "Frida and Diego" to their soul mates, the Cohans. Of course the author knows no Spanish but this condition doesn't deter him in the least. He barrels along; hauling drunks onto their feet, lifting peddlers' heavy carts up staircases, and listening to his maids "jabber;" all the while delivering himself of a plethora of ethnocentric assumptions with nary a qualm or glimmer of understanding. But there is a sort of winning self-assurance to Cohan's smug telling of his odyssey and the unwary reader may have to slog through to page 286 before he encounters an elderly peddler whose voice Cohan describes as a, "Placido Domingo baritone."
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