Rating: 
Summary: Captures the "smell of the place"
Review: The goal of a travel book should be to convey to readers far away the physical and emotional feeling of a specific locale. For San Miguel de Allende, Tony Cohan does this perfectly. His portrayal of the challenges and experiences he faced when he uprooted from the US and moved to Mexico are colorful, lively, and filled with detail. His stories and accounts give real insight into the way myth and tradition blend with everyday life in modern Mexico. As someone who recently spent his first month in southern and central Mexico, I am struck by the degree to which he captured the feeling of San Miguel and other small towns like it. Cohan's sense of joy and wonder at what he's seeing and learning spill out of the pages, leaving the reader anxious as hell to experience Mexico. A bunch of reviewers trashed this book for being too self-centered, too generalist, and too focused on shopping trips. Those people miss the point. Part of the joy of living in Mexico, for Tony Cohan and for other Americans and Europeans who move there, is precisely being able to buy your vegetables, tortillas and shoelaces from a person you know rather than a faceless corporation. If you don't understand this, visit Mexico (not Cancun or Acapulco, but Oaxaca, San Cristobal, Guanajuato and the like) and you will. It's a micro-book, and it makes no pretentions to be otherwise. While the author at times gets a little carried away with his romanticization of San Miguel, he brings a perspective that really resonated. If you go in expecting one individual's personal account rather than a travel guide or an anthropological study, you'll be more than satisfied. Well-written and fun, it's a fantastic read, and a must if you don't know much about Mexico.
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: Call Me Mr. Sensitive
Review: Horrid garbage of the most pretentious kind. Our Hero, a fragile soul whose nerves are all a jingly-jangly because of the evil ways of the US of A, jets down to San Miguel (first class? who can doubt it?) with his oh-so-artistic wife and together they become One With The People as few Gringos have before. Hmmm, smell that mole cooking. They don't have mole in LA, do they? Hey, nice shirt on that woman, let's buy it off her back! Wow, no home burglar alarm systems here in Quaint and Soulful San Miguel. Yeah, not more than about 10,000 of them -- after all, we have to protect the $$$$$$$$ of the mega-rich Gringos from California and Texas who populate this place. Hey, forget about a plastic toy for little Jonny, let's buy him this wooden donkey. Won't we look artistic and sensitive and soulful when it's unwrapped? I suppose this book could have been more patronizing, but it would have taken some work. As we say in San Antoinio, eeee-ho!
Rating: 
Summary: As warm and colorful as the author's garden
Review: Very affectionate as memoirs go, as the author's appreciation of San Miguel grows with the passage of 15 years. We see nervous visitors develop increasing resourcefulness as they become contented residents, while they introduce us to a parade of beguiling acquaintances. Familiar ground to those who love Mexico already, a worthy introduction for others curious why we do.
Rating:
Summary: subtle and exquisite
Review: I'm writing this review from Oaxaca, where I just finished reading On Mexican Time and I found it a subtle and beautiful description of a life developed in Mexico over fifteen years. As the writer's Mexican life winds deeper around him, and as he comes to speak Spanish, the perceptions become deeper too. This book isn't for the margarita and RV beach crowd. This is for people who are sensitive to the art and the culture they find in a foreign place. Cohan isn't confused about who he is, gringo or Mexican, and he confronts the invasion of Americans to his town and other parts of Mexico with his eyes wide open. It's a poetic and insightful journey. I've spent many years visiting Mexico, and I loved the book. Jeanette
Rating:
Summary: An interesting look at Mexico
Review: I read this book about eight months or so ago and found it a very pleasant read. It is above average, but not great writing. The book does succeed wonderfully in transporting one from the armchair to San Miguel... having never been there (or farther into Mexico than the border cities - but that's not the Mexico I hear of from people who travel farther south), I had an open mind. Thus, I was not constantly comparing the book against my own experiences or preconcieved notions. While reading the reviews posted here I came up with a few thoughts that might be relevant. First, this is a book by a couple who traveled to Mexico to live, NOT to Louisiana. In my reading I found nothing that claimed that it is necessary to leave the US to achieve a calmer lifestyle. I am certain there are plenty of books about places in the US where similar features of living can be found. Second, while Cohan does at times come across as a bit patronizing, I found his documented actions to be pretty typical of American travelers... who tend to try to "help out" whenever confronted with a situation seemingly needing assistance. I don't think Cohan is perfect... but this is a book about one couple's somewhat unexpected decision to leave LA for a very different place. Anyway, I am not really wanting to rebut other reviews... I did find this an interesting book. As an architect I was fascinated by the Cohan's tales of restoring their crumbling hacienda... particularly the way they actually decided to buy the place. I have seen couples divorce over far lesser challenges right here in California... I'd like to see what the place is like now. This is not really a travel guide. There seems to be plenty of information that would be useful to a traveler to San Miguel, but it really is a chronicle of a time of major transition and interesting new frontiers. These are pretty "everyday" people who decided through a process of traveling to Mexico to pull out of a life that was unsatisfying and try something new. It takes a little bravery, some resources and a lot of that ability to laugh at ones' self to make something like that work. The author seems to have done a fine job. Worth the time to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Pretentious
Review: Halfway through I began to really dislike this couple for their ridiculous attempt to give their move to San Miguel the tone of a british colonialist in India. They and their new acquaintances take a housewarming dinner party and try to imbue every little detail with signifcance. The overall effect is nausea. I give him 2 stars because his genuine love of the place does come through and the writing isn't all bad. If you like reading the travel section of the LA times you might actually enjoy this.
Rating:
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."
Rating:
Summary: Pure Enjoyment
Review: I loved Tony Cohan's account of his experiences in Mexico. I realise that this is not an "in depth" look at Mexican culture but for me it was pure escapism. Most of us long to escape to a slower and simpler way of life but are not able to do so - the next best thing is to read about the experiences of someone who has. An excellent example of the genre. Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: I Wanted to Love This Book....
Review: I have travelled to Mexico three times, though not to San Miguel de Allende. I was truly excited by the prospect of reading this book as I have an ongoing fascination with Mexico and its culture. Unfortunately, Cohan's self-indulgent whining and tedious, repetitive prose style present themselves as tangible obstacles. I did, however, enjoy some of his vivid descriptions and the few glimpses of this town he provides that aren't obscured by his egotistical point of view.
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