An irreverent history of Mexico, but mostly it's capital city, from the Pleistocene to swine flu. Mexico City is an enormous and unwieldy mess. 20 million people, 15% unemployment, housing the richest man in the world and many of the world's poorest. Some of the worst air quality on the planet, and a constantly depleting water table. But Mexico City is also the national stage for Mexico the country, a city where leftist currents have taken hold from outside and from the inside. In fact, for the last decade, Mexico City has been the largest megalopoplis to be run by the electoral left for the last ten years.

John Ross has a great sense of humor and a great sense of justice. He's not a stenographer: You wouldn't have bought this book if you hadn't known that John Ross wrote several books in awe of the Zapatistas and a book about the American dinosaur Left called Murdered by Capitalism. But it's his embracing the electoral left in Mexico (from Tata Cardenas to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) that most surprised me. He even goes out of his way to criticize those who excoriate the electoral left (Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista Other Campaign, anarchists and ultraleftist students). This is especially strange given his overwhelming support of these movements in other venues.

He also has his particular peeves about city life in the Monster that I didn't necessarily share, as I read the bulk of the book inside the city itself on a trip to visit old friends. I happen to agree with his annoyance with the organ grinders, but my girlfriend who bought me this book thinks that they are lovely! And it was strange to hear the relief in his written voice that the "ambulantes" or street sellers (who are among the poorest of the Mexico City residents, subsisting entirely on an informal economy) had been forcibly removed from the sidewalks in certain areas by the police under an electoral left mayor. We also disagree on Cafe La Blanca, where Sara and I went having both dessert one night with the author, and breakfast the next morning. We'd rather go to any of the Tacos Al Pastor holes in the wall than this massive diner with it's expensive and mediocre food. But if you live here for long enough, I can imagine wanting some kind of consistency, and I guess La Blanca can offer that...

Something else I remember clearly about the book is the near outright dismissal of the Mexican Revolution. Though he finds inspiration in the struggle of the Liberation Army of the South as lead by Emiliano Zapata, the revolution was a pit of misery and death for nearly all those involved. The only people who seem to want to remember it differently are the ones who, in the end, profited most from it: the one-party-mafia-state apparatus known as the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the wealthy classes. The poor, on whose backs the revolution was fought, despite all their deaths, did not win this revolution.

Despite his annoyance with the ambulantes, his disdain for organ grinders, his bad taste in diners, and his tolerance for the electoral left, this book is worth reading. You will delight at the stories of Superbarrio, gasp at the stories of police corruption, and be touched by the stories of the regular people who live in Mexico City. ( )

Ex-beat does Mexico. The book wanders as did Ross in his life. Book is bloated, but readable, because of its topic. I almost trust what Ross says. He tried. That's good enough for me. ( )

It's the ultimate insider's guide, and it does help to have spent time in the city, particularly as a "political tourist," and to be as fascinated with it as Ross was, to enjoy this book. His jazzy, irreverent voice isn't your graduate history professor's, and that's a plus. To those of us who met or knew John Ross, local San Francisco legend that he was, just about every line puts him right back there in front of you. But every great city deserves a history like this--one that gives you not just the vital statistics and the goings-on at the top, but a sense of daily life down the years, sights, sounds and smells -- and its own John Ross to write it. ( )

An interesting and eccentric history of Mexico City, from the point of view of an American expatriate. Reminded me of reading Mike Royko's writings about Chicago. I didn't QUITE finish it before sending it off to my mom for her birthday (don't tell her!) ( )

I wanted to like this book, and I read it straight through, but the author confuses a populist approach and opinion with carelessness about the facts. The book is sprinkled with old canards repeated as fact, ranging from things as simple as the origins of the word "gringo" to statements like "Pancho Villa sodomized nuns." Is that last one fact? Old propaganda from the Cristero war? There is no way to tell, since the author writes it as a declarative sentence and does not provide sources for anything. So I am still looking for a popular history of Mexico City to add to the cronicas of Carlos Monsivais and the portraits of the city in Paco Ignacio Taibo II's books. ( )