Rating: 
Summary: Real people living their dream in Old Mexico
Review: I was totally inspired by Tony's story of their new life in San Miguel. The book kept me looking forward to the next chance I had to pick it up and keep reading. The description of life there has me so inspired that I'm hoping to take a bus trip there this summer. Totally enjoyable reading experience! Thanks, Tony!
Rating: 
Summary: another yuppie house remodel
Review: I echo the sentiments of previous readers--too much shopping, remodeling, and too many gringos. Cohan and his wife escape L.A. so they can duplicate their acquisitiveness by buying and furnishing a house in Mexico. This is essentially an account of a 15-year visit to a nice, middle-aged couple's lovely vacation home. Made me want to join the Zapatistas.
Rating: 
Summary: More Mayes than Mayle
Review: I bought this book based on descriptions that it was in the same vein as Peter Mayle's descriptions of Provence. Consequently, I was set up for considerable disappointment. Unlike Mayle's lighthearted, and occasionally self deprecating depictions, this work is more about Cohan's reflections and soul searching than about San Miguel, Mexico. The mid-life angst Cohan shares seems to echo that of Frances Mayes in her "Under the Tuscan Sun". Where Mayes bemoans the shackles of her answering machine, Cohan laments the oppression of an existence at the mercy of home security systems in Los Angeles. Much of his work is the rant of a stereotypic ex-patriot: the US is shallow, materialistic, success oriented; Mexico is kind, cultured, and humanistic. However, Cohan and his wife are periodically required to return to Sodom to finance their existence in Xanadu resulting in descriptions of the increasingly culture shock they experience in the US, only decompressing upon their return to mellow Mexico. Yawn. His descriptions of San Miguel and Mexico are genuinely interesting as is his description of various home improvement projects (again reminiscent of Mayes). These save the book and make reading it worthwhile, but it's hardly a "refreshing" or even a particularly uplifting read.
Rating: 
Summary: On Mexican Time
Review: Mr. Cohan and his wife's slow journey from up-tight Angeleans into more introspective, sensitive people, living a slower, much more people-involved type of life was a delight. Taking 14 years into account, the journey was more than worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Shallow, exploitive.
Review: Mr Cohan elitism and rip-off of Peter Mayle's fine love of France and his experiences there, is a palid and shallow look at a small Mexican town that deserves better. All the book is, is a thinly (and shallow)disguised look at Mr Cohan himself. And any deeper I would not wish to read. Mr Cohan displays no real knowledge of Mexico or her people, nor does he display much love for this country which he dares to try to show us. As a Mexican I am disgusted with the book. As one who visits San Miguel regularly, I am shocked with Mr Cohan's vacuous take on such a multi-layered town. To learn more about Mexico, skip this book.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful vision of a new life
Review: Listening to this on tape in my car, I wanted to pack up immediately and begin to live my new life in Mexico. I love stories of people who choose to live differently, particularly when they make that choice later in life. I was fascinated by the mention of his wife weaving art from her hair, and occasionally wished while listening to this that there were more detail about how they made their livings in such a different locale. But I absolutely now must visit San Miguel de Allende and see this place for myself.. . . which is why if I ever escape to the perfect idyllic town, I don't think I would ever write a single word about it!
Rating: 
Summary: falling in love with the mirror
Review: This book is quite a feat. In it, Mr. Cohan demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of almost every important aspect of Mexican culture: the language, the Mexican people, and Catholicism. One would at least expect his editor to correct his misuse of Spanish (for example, the type of traditional Mexican song is a "corrido," not "corrida," which is actually a different word). At times, his description (which is annoyingly self-congratulatory) of his "immersion" in Mexican culture is laughable. For example, during his first week, he proudly informs us that he has stopped shaving and now wears huaraches instead of shoes (even though his feet are bleeding). Wow! He's in sooo deep. The reader should be suspicious of how Mr. Cohan was able to fall in love with Mexico while speaking virtually no Spanish. As somebody who is fluent in Spanish, has travelled extensively in Mexico, and has a number of Mexican friends, I can assure you that it is impossible to have any authentic understanding of Mexico and Mexicans without a command of Spanish. One must be able to interact extensively with the people and their culture, and that means conversations at an adult level (not baby talk in beginning Spanish), reading local newspapers, watching local television, listening to local radio, overhearing converstions on the bus, etc. Mr. Cohan simply fell in love with his own projected, idealized notion of what he thinks Mexico is. It never dawns on Mr. Cohan that he has brought with him to Mexico the shallow, narcissistic consumerism from which he thinks he has escaped. It is not coincidental that much of Mr. Cohan's and his wife's early activity in Mexico consists of shopping. In an early passage of the book, he bursts with enthusiasm about his wife's having bought a blouse "literally of the back" of a humble local woman. It is also important to point out that San Miguel is a very touristy town with a large number of gringos who have helped turn it into more of a boutique than a typical Mexican town. This book is totally false, light-weight and dilettantish, and could be taken seriously only by someone who knows nothing about Mexico.
Rating:
Summary: A New Kind of Travel Writing
Review: What I really liked about this book was that it seemed to move beyond the typical post-colonial gringo-goes-somewhere-and rhapsodizes-about-the natives. Cohan lived there for many years before he took up his subject, and it shows. He starts out as a romantic voyeur but as the book goes on his experiences deepen and he manages to convey those realistically and yet lyrically. Mexican-U.S. relations are among the most charged on the planet. On Mexican Time is an enchanting book, yes, but it's doing some serious cross-cultural business at the same time.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes fiction is truer than reality
Review: I agree with those who have not been totally charmed by Mr. Cohan's book. For a much more rewarding reading experience concerning Mexico, check out David Lida's "Travel Advisory". It's short stories mainly about foreigners in Mexico that are much more insightful and fun than Mr. Cohan's slight book.
Rating:
Summary: On Mexican Time
Review: As a longtime friend of both San Miguel and Provence, I must agree with the blurb that Cohan equates to Mayle...but only in terms of strong egos and weak apologies for peddling the innocence of their newly beloved countries. Cohan's sophomoric blather, more like assigned reading for High School Spanish 101 than the work of an aged Stanford author,is repetitive,tiringly repetitive and flowery, often self-contradictory and overly righteous...like so many other gringos who, Cortez-like, imagine to discover a virgin and proceed to gloat over its deflowering.
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