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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #366059 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

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

About the Author
David Lida is an American who has lived in Mexico City for much of the last fifteen years. His journalism has been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Forward, Interview, Gourmet, and The Village Voice, among others. He is also the author of a book of short stories that take place in Mexico, Travel Advisory.

Customer Reviews

Buy this poka madre book along with Mexico: An Opinionated Guide
Ever motivated by his affection for Mexico City, David Lida presents First Stop in the New World, about the people and places that have shaped his own conclusion on what it means to live in the labyrinth that is el Distrito Federal. First Stop is written in the style you would expect from someone with years of experience in journalism, with a witty and authentic voice that can inform us about Mexico City like any lifelong capitalino, and still remain refreshingly apolitical. He is not afraid of clarifying the truth behind the "Wal-mart next door to the Pyramids" rumor, or the exaggeration of the frequency of kidnappings. Want to know the truth behind these two sensational stories? Read this book to find out.

Lida's literary style comes through his investigative narrative, (and evokes his other career as a short story writer), filled with characters that are fodder for stories in their own right, as he admits. He recounts details as varied as Mexico City herself - how the the culture drives the sexuality of the inhabitants; how the city inspires ingenious ways for people to become entrepreneurs; and how the urban landscape even affects what people eat and how they eat. Lida is clearly in love with the city he calls home, and like a passionate lover, the City can sometimes hurt the one who loves her: readers will be jarred by Lida's composed, calm testimony about his ordeal as a victim of an "express kidnapping". It would have been easy for anyone to write about this with certain bitterness, but Lida did not let this experience keep him away from el D.F.

As a chilangofile myself, I am happy to find that as joyously overwhelming as Mexico City is, Lida's book is not improvised like the very lives and urban sprawl he writes about; it is carefully composed with ringside accounts of someone who has been there, and stayed to tell the stories, without the insular judgment of an infrequent tourist "surviving among the natives." The book reads less like generic publications on Mexico and closer to literary journalism, which makes First Stop in the New World a book worth reading multiple times, both for its smooth prose and the startling metropolis it chronicles.

A street-level panorama...indeed!
David Lida's vivid and fascinating word portraits provide a sense of intimate clarity for the myriad sights and scenes of La Capital. He has a real feel for the big picture of such an immense and tumultuous metropolis, as well as an adroitness for rendering closely observed D.F. moments and depicting the divers characters that inhabit its streets and colonias.

A hilarious yet poignant account of an afternoon spent in the company of a group of borrachos in a cantina is just one among several highlights, as is the chilling tale of his own kidnapping.

He presents a vision of Mexico City that is affectionate yet unsentimental. His love for the place is clear-eyed and his knowledge is hard-earned. He manages to cover it all: from Tepito to Polanco, from discussions of various art[s] scenes and popular culture to distinctive local religious practices and social/sexual mores, from Carlos Slim to faded night club singers. Lida is a true urban cicerone.

Chris Humphrey's "Moon Mexico City" and Jim Johnston's "Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide..." are both fine books and excellent aids for the English-speaking visitor trying to cope with Chilango-land. "First Stop in the New World..." is indispensable as a means of more deeply understanding it and will be a permanent addition to the city's literature.

The Real Thing
I've lived in Mexico City for over ten years and find David Lida's perspective on urban life to ring true. The book nicely combines investigative journalism with an entertaining, personal voice, giving it a 'you-are-there' feel.
Jim Johnston, author of 'Mexico City: an Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler'