Yesterday's Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History [Hardcover]

Terry Pindell (Author), Lourdes Ramirez Mallis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1997

In a third North American rail journey, the author of Making Tracks and his native Latin collaborator explore not only the rich past of Mexico and the country's beautiful landscape, but also the conflict between their choice of transportation and the Mexican culture itself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Terry Pindell crisscrosses Mexico by train, and in doing so he weaves a travel classic, one of those books that manages to combine the sights and smells and colors of today's Mexico with a fascinating, erudite analysis of Mexico's political, economic, geologic, and cultural history. Insightful, readable, respectful, and exhaustively researched, Pindell has written an excellent travel narrative.

From Publishers Weekly

Mexico is not Nebraska, Pindell (Making Tracks) remarks at the end of this engrossing journey, but "[w]hatever the impenetrable barriers to a foreigner's vision... visiting [Mexico] provokes... a renaissance of spirit in the hearts of visitors like me from a world where humanity is too easily chartered and packaged into forms that can be marketed for profit." He and his native collaborator criss-cross the country along the routes of its rail system from north to south, east to west, through its stunning landscapes, cities, villages and open country, and as they detrain to rest in a hotel, explore a famous site and talk to people, they lay bare in gripping detail the many struggles of the Mexican people as they have endured slavery, miscegenation, revolution and corrupt government over the centuries while still, the authors claim, managing to assert a true "soul of the nation." In the authors' view that staunch soul is characterized by its "unbridled humanity...its transmutation of loss into an intensity of feeling, the earnest desire of every Mexican to make human contact." It is made visible to visitors mostly in its great creative arts, its festivals and in the lively cacophony of its marketplaces and plazas. The authors discuss the effect of NAFTA on various communities they travel to, and they believe the recent uprisings in Chiapas?which they visit?and elsewhere are evidence of a slow but enduring struggle for equity that has existed since the days of the conquistadors. This is a moving and contagious celebration of a nation whose history, pains, perseverance and values are still among the most foreign and difficult for North Americans to comprehend.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 377 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805037918
• ISBN-13: 978-0805037913
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,275,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mexico connected., October 17, 1999

By 

Elkhart (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yesterday's Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History (Paperback)

I've now completed Pindell's North American train trilogy, and have found him to be the perfect traveling companion. If this book is slightly less successful than the earlier ones, it is only because the central metaphor -- trains as history -- sits less comfortably on Mexico than it does on the US and Canada. For those who love trains, geography, or cultural history, this book provides some clean connections.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent observations of modern Mexico, for a gringo., November 8, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yesterday's Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History (Hardcover)

Any gringo who has traveled extensively in Mexico will enjoy this read. It captures the essence of this wonderful place, and recognizes the differences of how things work from north of the border, without degrading the Mexican culture. I rate as one of the best books of travel in Mexico.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Author has nothing original to say about Mexico OR trains, July 22, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Yesterday's Train: A Rail Odyssey Through Mexican History (Hardcover)

You might find it hard to believe that someone who can't speak Spanish would undertake a travel book about Mexico. However, this turns out not to be an authentic travel book, but simply a re-hashing of Mexican history obviously taken second-hand from other American & English writers, & arbitrarily attached to a map of various train rides (which are perfunctorily described but not effectively connected in any way with Mexico)