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Article: The Model Megacity?(The Arts)(First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century)(Book review)
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- June 23, 2008
- Author:
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Byline: Joseph Contreras
A new book about Mexico City paints colorful portraits but fails to illuminate the big picture.
DAVID LIDA FIRST APPROACHED Mexico City, the subject of his new book, with a wariness verging on trepidation. The native New Yorker made several trips to Mexico starting in the early 1980s but had always steered clear of its capital, "influenced by the propaganda dismissing it as a teeming, overpopulated, polluted bedlam, full of horrific testimonies of insuperable poverty." Then during a vacation in 1987, a layover forced him to spend a night in a downtown hotel. It was love at first wide-eyed sight for the American journalist, and ...