Rating: 
Summary: An enchanting reading experience
Review: Finally! A book that depicts an accurate picture of a Mexican town... And not just any, but San Miguel de Allende, a true Mexican colonial jewel.Cohan's writing style and taste for anecdotes and cultural tidbits make this book my favorite. For once, I am happy to see Mexico and its people depicted with such gusto. We are very far from these daily acounts of violence perpetrated against American tourists visiting Mexico that can be found daily in the American papers, and that promote an inaccurate idea about our neighbor country. It's about time!
Rating: 
Summary: A great personal account, too bad about the generalizations
Review: If you have interest in Mexico, you will most likely enjoy this book. Is is a fairly detailed account of someone suddenly discovering Mexico and little by little learning the language, the customs, buying real estate, and taking up nearly full time residence there. This is the major thread of the book and there are some gems here. It makes some generalizations you may or may not notice or enjoy. For example, the Zapatistas are Mexico's "new heroes" and proposition 187 in California sought to deny basic services to Mexican workers. I found these controversial and cheap shots irritating. I think even this, though, shows what the expatriate community in San Miguel de Allende is all about; its self satisfied and hip political correctness.
Rating: 
Summary: The good and bad
Review: Having lived and worked in a town near San Miguel de Allende I enjoyed this book. It brought back lots of memories of the area and people. Being able to picture every city, street, and building that Cohan mentioned, since I have seen them all, helped to create wonderful imagery for me. I do think it is important to point out that San Miguel is really a tourist town. There are lost ex-pats living there and everyone speaks english and many times prefer english to espanol. Rich Texans take weekend vacations there and only the wealthy Mexicans can afford to visit a place so important in their history. (Many of my Mexican friends call it Saint Michael - because of all the Americans). In a way it is sad that Tony Cohan's book is good, because I think more people will visit San Miguel de Allende and the historic little mountain town will lose its magic. But at the same time the economy of San Miguel de Allende deeply depends on las turistas. I guess it's a Catch 22. Enjoy the book!
Rating:
Summary: On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel
Review: This is the best book of this genre that I've read, and I've read a lot of 'em. I spend as much time in Mexico as I can and go as often as I can, and reading this book is the next best thing.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I have read in years
Review: Back in the mid 1980s, about the time Tony Cohan and his wife discovered San Miguel de Allende, my wife and I spent six weeks driving through Mexico, becoming enthralled with this land and it's cultures. Since then we have often thought of uprooting and heading south of the border. Our trip didn't take us to San Miguel, though we spent lot of time in nearby Guanajuato and Queretero and other cities of the central highlands. It has never been hard for me to summon an imaginary San Miguel. So when I saw this book I snatched it up. The cover art looks like so many of my photographs from Mexico... ...And I was sucked into Tony Cohan's fabulous writing. I finished the book in three evenings, while nonetheless feeling as though I were languishing in the "sabor" of every paragraph. Cohan's book is not an artsy-fartsy travelogue about San Miguel de Allende. It is a wonderful journal of a life he and his wife have undertaken together. While there is little doubt that the sounds, smells, flavors of classic Mexico richly permeate every page of this book, it is true, too, that the book could have been about a small town in Piedmont Virginia, or the south of France, or anywhere that the frantic and grasping and ultra-"productive" life has not yet conquered all. This book is truly inspriring, and beautifully written. It is just what I needed to remind me to pay attention to life all around me, to love and sensation and contemplation and cockroaches and scorpions and dying vines... Thanks, Mr. Cohan, for letting us into your sojourn. Don't worry...I won't run to St.Miguel and accelerate the gentrification. Instead, I'll look around my home and my yard and my neighbohood and be greatful for my own San Miguel...and for your fine book.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, insightful, rich
Review: Tony Cohan brings most of your senses into play with his descriptions of life in and around San Miguel de Allende - smells, tastes, colors, the changes of the seasons, and so on. There's also a cast of local characters that seemingly changes as often as the seasons, and a fairly significant chunk of the book is devoted to their experiences in buying, renovating and adding on to an aged, practically falling-down hacienda, with the inevitable experiences with various workers, handymen, etc. If you're already interested in Mexico, and particularly San Miguel de Allende, this is probably a good choice. If you're squeamish about reading about getting 'turista' or killing scorpions, this is too 'bohemian' for you. :^)
Rating:
Summary: Put me on the next plane to San Miguel
Review: I'm not normally an armchair traveler, but the colors on the book jacket lured me in. Once inside, Cohan's words took over, and I've been dreaming of Mexico ever since. Who wouldn't want to move to a small town, learn from the artists and expats there, and rebuild a house into your very own dream home? I've never physically been to San Miguel, but if I ever go, I'm sure I will instantly feel right at home thanks to this beautiful and exciting book book.
Rating: 
Summary: Self centered and not fulfilling
Review: I am going to San Miguel next week and got excited about reading this book, as I live in LA and the author lived here too and moved to San Miguel. I got hooked into reading it and must admit I finished it, but soon realized that it was a silly little book. There was virtually nothing about San Miguel and the characters about whom the author wrote were distant and seemingly figments of one's imagination. The dialogue was ridiculous. I'm not sure what the point of the book is, but it isn't enough to be a diary and certainly not even close to giving one a feeling of life in San Miguel de Allende. It pretends to be erudite literature and the author never lets you forget that he knows this person, and that person, etc. It is a boring, drolling piece of work that drags on, but at least the type was fairly large and it didn't take long to finish it.
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Summary: Written from the heart.
Review: I REALLY liked this book very much. I read a lot of travel books, but I liked this more than any other I have read for a long time. It left the "Provences' and 'Tuscanys' for dead. The reason is this.......Tony Cohan manages to show the sense of excitement in finding a new place that you really love so much that you can't get enough of it. I too have a place like this, though mine is not in Mexico, it's in Indonesia. And unfortunately I don't have a way to live there all the time. But this book made to want to go San Miguel de Allende (and, yes, I have been to Mexico) and it reminded me of how I felt when I found my special place in Indonesia. It also reminded me of the things I've done there and the characters I've met, and of learning Indonesian & the satisfaction when yet another cultural mystery is unravelled.
Rating:
Summary: Read it Only if You Must
Review: If you love Mexico, as I do, or are moving down there, as I am, then, sure, read this book. But if you are after some good travel writing, look elsewhere. The author tries SO HARD to sound flowery, impressive, artsy and cultured that I frankly found it disgusting. He was always trying to impress the reader with his words rather than just tell his story. One example: "Out here on the Mexican road, I have veered into the realm of casual anarchy, where the instruments of recourse may be worse than the problem that occasioned them." Huh? Another example: "The scene is Fellini, Jacques Tati--or Luis Bunuel." If that describes a scene well for you, then maybe this book is for you! Personally, I found his prose very irritating.
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