Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-first Century

New
Paperback
2011
$17.20

This book recounts Hernandez's electrifying journey through the far-off slums, glittering fashion parties and rapturous religious rituals of one of the world's most exciting megacities - the seething urban valley known as 'D.F.' to the locals. In vivid, intimate storytelling, Hernandez shows readers the youth subcultures - or 'urban tribes' - that define social life for young people in the megalopolis. Surrounded by volcanoes, earthquake-prone and caked in smog, the city is a place of astounding manifestations of danger, desire, humour, and beauty, a surreal landscape of 'elemental violence'. In the 'lake of fire' that is Mexico City, youth tribes brawl in public plazas and kidnapping gangs terrorise the wealthy.

As the year 2012 approaches, the so-called end of the Mayan calendar, Hernandez contemplates a vision of a future where Mexico City could locate a 'cosmic equilibrium' that has eluded it for five centuries.

Synopsis

This book recounts Hernandez's electrifying journey through the far-off slums, glittering fashion parties and rapturous religious rituals of one of the world's most exciting megacities - the seething urban valley known as 'D.F.' to the locals. In vivid, intimate storytelling, Hernandez shows readers the youth subcultures - or 'urban tribes' - that define social life for young people in the megalopolis. Surrounded by volcanoes, earthquake-prone and caked in smog, the city is a place of astounding manifestations of danger, desire, humour, and beauty, a surreal landscape of 'elemental violence'. In the 'lake of fire' that is Mexico City, youth tribes brawl in public plazas and kidnapping gangs terrorise the wealthy.

As the year 2012 approaches, the so-called end of the Mayan calendar, Hernandez contemplates a vision of a future where Mexico City could locate a 'cosmic equilibrium' that has eluded it for five centuries.

$17.20

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Edition: Original
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Published: 14 Apr 2011
ISBN 10: 1416577033
ISBN 13: 9781416577034

Media Reviews

Daniel Hernandez is our guide into Mexico City's labyrinth of urban tribes, this vast twenty-first century urban survival laboratory. He writes about his experience as he lived it, with hungry and daring curiosity, bursts of stunning poetry, charming earnestness, penetrating intelligence, always without cliches. --Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder
Concise, pithy, honest, and clear-eyed, Hernandez is a trustworthy, infallible guide through one of the most amazing cities on earth. --Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and Trouble
Simply brilliant. A reader couldn't ask for a more compassionate, more daring, or more honest guide to the world's most maddening mega-city. -- Daniel Alarcon, author of Lost City Radio
Daniel Hernandez navigates the beautiful chaos of Mexico City with a reporter's tenacity, an adventurer's daring and an open heart that allows him to discover the history that lives inside him. Gorgeously done. --Laurie Ochoa, co-founder and editor Slake: Los Angeles
Down and Delirious in Mexico City is essential for anyone who cares about this confusing and misunderstood megalopolis, and particularly what it means to be young here. -David Lida, author of First Stop in the New World
This guy can really write! --Alma Guillermoprieto, author of Dancing with Cuba
Let's Go Mexico City this isn't, and we're all the better for it. --Josh Kun, University of Southern California.
Pitch-perfect and incandescent... An invitation to live. --Gabriela Jauregui, Author of Controlled Decay

Author Bio

Daniel Hernandez is a freelance journalist in Mexico City and a contributor at the Mexico City bureau of the Los Angeles Times. He is a former staff writer of the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly. His journalism has appeared over a variety of platforms and regions, including All Things Considered and Latino USA on NPR, The Guardian, El Pais, and Gatopardo. Daniel is a native of San Diego and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.