First Stop in the New World
and over 360,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Good Food in Mexico City: A Guide to Food Stalls, Fondas and Fine Dining by Nicholas Gilman |
by Streetwise Maps
|
by Ruben Gallo
|
Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca by Kristin Norget |
by David Lida
|
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Clear-eyed, agenda-free journalism, grounded in old-fashioned street reporting … As Joseph Mitchell captured life on the margins of midcentury New York, Orhan Pamuk the melancholia of 20th century Istanbul, and Martha Gellhorn civilian suffering in Civil War Spain, Lida masterfully details the plight of a struggling and repressed city.
... You’ll want to read "First Stop in the New World" for the unvarnished off- the-grid tour Lida provides; for the singers and hustlers and artists you'll meet; and for the insight you'll develop into an ancient, booming but seriously ailing metropolis.”
—Mary D’Ambrosio, San Francisco Chronicle
“Streetwise and up-to-date … a charmingly idiosyncratic, yet remarkably comprehensive portrait of one of the planet's most misinterpreted urban spaces.”
—Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times
“A bumper crop of travelogues and anthologies about Mexico have been appeared in the last few years. David Lida’s low-life tour of Mexico City, its sex clubs as well as its food stalls, not only belongs on this list, it shoots to the top.
… To test the quality of a travel book, it helps to ask: Would you like to share a meal or a drink with the writer? On the evidence of his book, which reveals him to be an expansive soul with big eyes and an even bigger heart, Mr. Lida should expect calls from a lot of newly arrived strangers, including me.”
—Richard B. Woodward, The New York Times
“A fast-paced account of daily life in a city that defies description… Lida finds far more to marvel over and enjoy than to fret about.”
—Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal
“Mexico City is a sprawling, throbbing stew of 20 million people, but David Lida, in his new book, cuts through the chaos with an array of verbal snapshots that aim to paint the city's soul.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A hip-smart tour through a baroque society … probing and witty.”
—Jason Berry, New Orleans Times Picayune
“A terrifically entertaining guide, displaying both intimate familiarity with the city and an outsider's eye for its quirks and weirdness.”
—Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle
“A gritty, nostalgic ode to the city … a fundamentally human collection of stories and reflections, a reminder that any city is about its people, their constant clash and coexistence.”
—Theresa Bradley, Associated Press
“Lida offers a thought-provoking account of current-day Mexico City by letting its citizens, known as chilangos, tell their own stories of everyday struggles and triumphs.”
—Vincent Bosquez, San Antonio Express News
“A wonderful trip through Mexico City, from its last cabaret to puerco profundo tacos to Ooorale!, a magazine that makes Star look downright prudish.”
—New York Magazine
“A unique and penetrating analysis of contemporary Mexico City … cleverly organized in enigmatically titled vignettes that delve headlong into Mexico City’s improbable mysteries … a book as audacious as the strategies for survival and advancement adopted by the everyday folk who live there.”
—Victor Lugo, Hispanic Magazine
“A series of deftly written vignettes about city life … Lida's affection for the much-maligned metropolis shines through in chapter after chapter … a welcome respite from the usual depictions of Mexico City as a menacing hellhole of corruption and violent crime. “
—Newsweek
“…thought-provoking and educational but also a satisfying read.”
—Library Journal
“David Lida shows us a Mexico City that’s not in the guidebooks, but, like a subversive code-breaker, he has pointed out the pathways to its delectably seamy soul. If Burroughs were alive and planning a return visit to Mexico today, he’d want to take this book with him.”
—Jon Lee Anderson author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and The Fall of Baghdad
“The city of Mexico, for any outsider, is fascinating, complex, exciting and strange. It is as though a loud and sexy party were going on in the room next door. This book offers an essential key to that room. From now on, anyone who goes to Mexico City without David Lida’s book is mad.”
—Colm Toíbín, author of The Master and Mothers and Sons
“Charmingly unaffected, forthright and widely knowledgeable walk through the highs and low of this teeming, complicated, immensely rewarding ‘hypermetropolis.’
Mexico City operates in a constant state of combustible reinvention, writes longtime resident Lida (Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico, 2000). Half its population of 20 million lives in poverty. They grapple with severe traffic, as well as service, transportation and crime problems. The government is in “limbo” and resistant to urban planning. But the Distrito Federal has also become the dynamic, spontaneous, cultural capital of Latin America. With the peso stabilized during the last decade, its economy increasingly attracts a global population. As a result, the author argues persuasively, it will be a significant center of 21st-century life. Since transplanting himself from New York in 1990, Lida has gained an excellent sense of how Mexico City functions, or doesn’t. He profiles its various neighborhoods, from Santa Fe to Condesa, its street markets and food stalls, festive cantinas and desperate pulquerías. He examines the inhabitants’ mania for wrestling matches and saint worship, their distinctive vernacular and the culture’s deeply ingrained machismo. Lida observes and listens to the chilangos, an insulting term for city residents proudly appropriated by the younger generation. He captures the voices of the earnest drunks he met in cantinas; the mature fichera who shared stories of her work as a bar companion for men; the 22-year-old accounting student from Ocho Barrios chosen to play Jesus in the Holy Week Passion; a glue-sniffing homeless waif from the army of 3,000 street children; and radio host Anabel Ochoa as she dispensed sex advice to her spectacularly repressed listeners. “Imagine a scene painted by George Grosz, peopled by figures with brown skin,” the author writes in an affecting, generous depiction of the wide range of humanity that comprises the city.
Lida depicts his adopted hometown with warmth, humor, wisdom and fortitude.”
—Kirkus
“David Lida's absorbing book shows us Mexico City in all its many guises—and there are guaranteed to be several dozen more of those than even well-informed readers are likely to know. Lida's eye for detail is impeccable, his writing is crisp and engaging, and he serves as the perfect informant, since he is somehow both an insider and an outsider.”
—Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings
“I may love Mexico City more than I love David Lida's First Stop in the New World, but it's close. From the wealth of art in Phil Kelly, to the art of wealth in Carlos Slim, from the tianguis to Teotihuacan, Condesa to Tepito, here is the whole story—all kinds of stories big and small, high and low, told with brains and charm, insight and fact—of la capital as it is lived in today.”
—Dagoberto Gilb, author of Gritos and Flowers
“You might think that a megalopolis of 20 million people wouldn’t lend itself to an intimate portrait. But David Lida has given us one, a weaving of memoir and reportage that is at turns funny and haunting, a personal journey into the crazy geography and tortured psychology of a place called Mexico City. First Stop in the New World captures that most elusive part of Mexico City: its soul.”
—Héctor Tobar, author of Translation Nation and Mexico City Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times
“David Lida has written what will surely stand for years as the definitive Mexico City book. Keen, clear-eyed, street-smart and culture-savvy, filled with eye-popping detail and probing insights, First Stop in the New World manages to do the seemingly impossible: deliver one of the most vexing, stimulating, dynamic and misunderstood capitals on earth into the realm of the comprehensible. It is impossible to imagine a better book about the city, a better writer to deliver it.”
—Tony Cohan, author of On Mexican Time and Mexican Days
“Nobody knows and understands contemporary Mexico City better than David Lida does. Nobody writes about it with a more passionate devotion and insight, or portrays its myriad inhabitants with such sympathy and humor. One of the world's greatest and most misunderstood cities has found its great translator and chronicler.”
—Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder
... You’ll want to read "First Stop in the New World" for the unvarnished off- the-grid tour Lida provides; for the singers and hustlers and artists you'll meet; and for the insight you'll develop into an ancient, booming but seriously ailing metropolis.”
—Mary D’Ambrosio, San Francisco Chronicle
“Streetwise and up-to-date … a charmingly idiosyncratic, yet remarkably comprehensive portrait of one of the planet's most misinterpreted urban spaces.”
—Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times
“A bumper crop of travelogues and anthologies about Mexico have been appeared in the last few years. David Lida’s low-life tour of Mexico City, its sex clubs as well as its food stalls, not only belongs on this list, it shoots to the top.
… To test the quality of a travel book, it helps to ask: Would you like to share a meal or a drink with the writer? On the evidence of his book, which reveals him to be an expansive soul with big eyes and an even bigger heart, Mr. Lida should expect calls from a lot of newly arrived strangers, including me.”
—Richard B. Woodward, The New York Times
“A fast-paced account of daily life in a city that defies description… Lida finds far more to marvel over and enjoy than to fret about.”
—Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal
“Mexico City is a sprawling, throbbing stew of 20 million people, but David Lida, in his new book, cuts through the chaos with an array of verbal snapshots that aim to paint the city's soul.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A hip-smart tour through a baroque society … probing and witty.”
—Jason Berry, New Orleans Times Picayune
“A terrifically entertaining guide, displaying both intimate familiarity with the city and an outsider's eye for its quirks and weirdness.”
—Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle
“A gritty, nostalgic ode to the city … a fundamentally human collection of stories and reflections, a reminder that any city is about its people, their constant clash and coexistence.”
—Theresa Bradley, Associated Press
“Lida offers a thought-provoking account of current-day Mexico City by letting its citizens, known as chilangos, tell their own stories of everyday struggles and triumphs.”
—Vincent Bosquez, San Antonio Express News
“A wonderful trip through Mexico City, from its last cabaret to puerco profundo tacos to Ooorale!, a magazine that makes Star look downright prudish.”
—New York Magazine
“A unique and penetrating analysis of contemporary Mexico City … cleverly organized in enigmatically titled vignettes that delve headlong into Mexico City’s improbable mysteries … a book as audacious as the strategies for survival and advancement adopted by the everyday folk who live there.”
—Victor Lugo, Hispanic Magazine
“A series of deftly written vignettes about city life … Lida's affection for the much-maligned metropolis shines through in chapter after chapter … a welcome respite from the usual depictions of Mexico City as a menacing hellhole of corruption and violent crime. “
—Newsweek
“…thought-provoking and educational but also a satisfying read.”
—Library Journal
“David Lida shows us a Mexico City that’s not in the guidebooks, but, like a subversive code-breaker, he has pointed out the pathways to its delectably seamy soul. If Burroughs were alive and planning a return visit to Mexico today, he’d want to take this book with him.”
—Jon Lee Anderson author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and The Fall of Baghdad
“The city of Mexico, for any outsider, is fascinating, complex, exciting and strange. It is as though a loud and sexy party were going on in the room next door. This book offers an essential key to that room. From now on, anyone who goes to Mexico City without David Lida’s book is mad.”
—Colm Toíbín, author of The Master and Mothers and Sons
“Charmingly unaffected, forthright and widely knowledgeable walk through the highs and low of this teeming, complicated, immensely rewarding ‘hypermetropolis.’
Mexico City operates in a constant state of combustible reinvention, writes longtime resident Lida (Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico, 2000). Half its population of 20 million lives in poverty. They grapple with severe traffic, as well as service, transportation and crime problems. The government is in “limbo” and resistant to urban planning. But the Distrito Federal has also become the dynamic, spontaneous, cultural capital of Latin America. With the peso stabilized during the last decade, its economy increasingly attracts a global population. As a result, the author argues persuasively, it will be a significant center of 21st-century life. Since transplanting himself from New York in 1990, Lida has gained an excellent sense of how Mexico City functions, or doesn’t. He profiles its various neighborhoods, from Santa Fe to Condesa, its street markets and food stalls, festive cantinas and desperate pulquerías. He examines the inhabitants’ mania for wrestling matches and saint worship, their distinctive vernacular and the culture’s deeply ingrained machismo. Lida observes and listens to the chilangos, an insulting term for city residents proudly appropriated by the younger generation. He captures the voices of the earnest drunks he met in cantinas; the mature fichera who shared stories of her work as a bar companion for men; the 22-year-old accounting student from Ocho Barrios chosen to play Jesus in the Holy Week Passion; a glue-sniffing homeless waif from the army of 3,000 street children; and radio host Anabel Ochoa as she dispensed sex advice to her spectacularly repressed listeners. “Imagine a scene painted by George Grosz, peopled by figures with brown skin,” the author writes in an affecting, generous depiction of the wide range of humanity that comprises the city.
Lida depicts his adopted hometown with warmth, humor, wisdom and fortitude.”
—Kirkus
“David Lida's absorbing book shows us Mexico City in all its many guises—and there are guaranteed to be several dozen more of those than even well-informed readers are likely to know. Lida's eye for detail is impeccable, his writing is crisp and engaging, and he serves as the perfect informant, since he is somehow both an insider and an outsider.”
—Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings
“I may love Mexico City more than I love David Lida's First Stop in the New World, but it's close. From the wealth of art in Phil Kelly, to the art of wealth in Carlos Slim, from the tianguis to Teotihuacan, Condesa to Tepito, here is the whole story—all kinds of stories big and small, high and low, told with brains and charm, insight and fact—of la capital as it is lived in today.”
—Dagoberto Gilb, author of Gritos and Flowers
“You might think that a megalopolis of 20 million people wouldn’t lend itself to an intimate portrait. But David Lida has given us one, a weaving of memoir and reportage that is at turns funny and haunting, a personal journey into the crazy geography and tortured psychology of a place called Mexico City. First Stop in the New World captures that most elusive part of Mexico City: its soul.”
—Héctor Tobar, author of Translation Nation and Mexico City Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times
“David Lida has written what will surely stand for years as the definitive Mexico City book. Keen, clear-eyed, street-smart and culture-savvy, filled with eye-popping detail and probing insights, First Stop in the New World manages to do the seemingly impossible: deliver one of the most vexing, stimulating, dynamic and misunderstood capitals on earth into the realm of the comprehensible. It is impossible to imagine a better book about the city, a better writer to deliver it.”
—Tony Cohan, author of On Mexican Time and Mexican Days
“Nobody knows and understands contemporary Mexico City better than David Lida does. Nobody writes about it with a more passionate devotion and insight, or portrays its myriad inhabitants with such sympathy and humor. One of the world's greatest and most misunderstood cities has found its great translator and chronicler.”
—Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder
Product Description
A panoramic literary portrait of Mexico City— a vibrant, seductive, paradoxical city now commanding the world’s attention and showing us the way to the future of urban life.
David Lida moved to Mexico City fifteen years ago in search of a kind of culture, energy, and spontaneity that he thought had been lost in his native New York City. What he found was a thriving, miraculous urban center comprising centuries of living history, even as its rapid development was making it a prominent force on the world stage. Through the eyes of an American who has become an insider, First Stop in the New World is a street-level panorama of contemporary Mexico City—from the high arts to the sex industry; from the dense jungle of urban politics to the interactions of everyday commerce; from one end of this five-hundred-square-mile city to the other. Lida expertly captures the kaleidoscopic nature of life in a city defined by pleasure and danger, justice and lawlessness, ecstatic joy and appalling tragedy—in limbo between the developed and developing worlds.
While London and Paris have become more homogenous, less captivating, and less surprising since the days when Dickens and Balzac wrote about them, Mexico City points to our urban future—if Manhattan was, as posited by Rem Koolhaas, the urban “Rosetta Stone of the twentieth century,” Mexico City will play that same role in the twenty-first. And with his personal, literary-journalistic account, David Lida will serve as the ultimate chronicler of this exciting city at a vital moment in its history.
David Lida moved to Mexico City fifteen years ago in search of a kind of culture, energy, and spontaneity that he thought had been lost in his native New York City. What he found was a thriving, miraculous urban center comprising centuries of living history, even as its rapid development was making it a prominent force on the world stage. Through the eyes of an American who has become an insider, First Stop in the New World is a street-level panorama of contemporary Mexico City—from the high arts to the sex industry; from the dense jungle of urban politics to the interactions of everyday commerce; from one end of this five-hundred-square-mile city to the other. Lida expertly captures the kaleidoscopic nature of life in a city defined by pleasure and danger, justice and lawlessness, ecstatic joy and appalling tragedy—in limbo between the developed and developing worlds.
While London and Paris have become more homogenous, less captivating, and less surprising since the days when Dickens and Balzac wrote about them, Mexico City points to our urban future—if Manhattan was, as posited by Rem Koolhaas, the urban “Rosetta Stone of the twentieth century,” Mexico City will play that same role in the twenty-first. And with his personal, literary-journalistic account, David Lida will serve as the ultimate chronicler of this exciting city at a vital moment in its history.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
From my first visit as a tourist, Mexico enchanted me. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
many chilangos, centro histórico Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mexico City, New York, United States, Santa Muerte, Latin America, Federal District, Los Angeles, Plaza Garibaldi, Big Brother, First World, Carlos Slim, Miguel Angel, Tía Remedios, Colonia Roma, Marcelo Ebrard, Virgin of Guadalupe, Zona Rosa, Mexico State, Juan Diego, San Juan Teotihuacán, World Cup, San Charbel, South America, López Obrador, Villa Rica Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
From my first visit as a tourist, Mexico enchanted me. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
many chilangos, centro histórico Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mexico City, New York, United States, Santa Muerte, Latin America, Federal District, Los Angeles, Plaza Garibaldi, Big Brother, First World, Carlos Slim, Miguel Angel, Tía Remedios, Colonia Roma, Marcelo Ebrard, Virgin of Guadalupe, Zona Rosa, Mexico State, Juan Diego, San Juan Teotihuacán, World Cup, San Charbel, South America, López Obrador, Villa Rica Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
95% buy the item featured on this page: First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century $17.13 |
 |
2% buy MEXICO CITY: AN OPINIONATED GUIDE FOR THE CURIOUS TRAVELER $11.16 |
 |
1% buy Good Food in Mexico City: A Guide to Food Stalls, Fondas and Fine Dining $10.85 |
 |
1% buy Streetwise Mexico City Map - Laminated City Center Street Map of Mexico City, MX - Folding pocket size travel map with metro map $7.95 |
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
So You'd Like to...
|
|
Product Information from the Amapedia Community
Beta (What's this?)Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.
› See featured Amapedia.com articles
Look for Similar Items by Category
- Books > History > Americas > Mexico
- Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban
- Books > Travel > Latin America > Mexico
- Books > Travel > Reference & Tips > Essays & Travelogues
Look for Similar Items by Subject
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
