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Customer Review
Engaging, a rarity.
The book is engaging, full of information and a rarity. Very valuable for someone looking for information about current events in South America.
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March 2, 2010
(Portland, OR) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5
He goes where few gringos have gone before.
If you love a good adverture travel book and want to get some poltical insight on what is happening in Latin America, this is the book. Chesa Boudin is the son (in his 20s) of Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert. His parents were members of the 60's Weather Underground and were sentenced, together with Bernadine Dohrn, to long 20+ years in prison. He is also a Rhodes scholar and currently writes for the Nation magazine.He starts off with a simple trip to Guatemala just to learn Spanish and winds up traveling to Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela and getting a close-up look at radical politics. For example, he got an interpreters job for the staff of President Hugo Chávez. He visited slums in Venezuela. He went down into the mines of Bolivia. He traveled with poor people deep in the jungles of Brazil. He lived with the elite of these countries as well as the most impoverished. And he did most of his travels in "chicken buses" instead of...
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April 28, 2011
(Redmond, WA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5
Product Description
Gringo charts two journeys, both of which began a decade ago. The first is the sweeping transformation of Latin American politics that started with Hugo Chávez's inauguration as president of Venezuela in 1999. In that same year, an eighteen-year-old Chesa Boudin leaves his middle-class Chicago life -- which is punctuated by prison visits to his parents, who were incarcerated when he was fourteen months old for their role in a politically motivated bank truck robbery -- and arrives in Guatemala. He finds a world where disparities of wealth are even more pronounced and where social change is not confined to classroom or dinner-table conversations, but instead takes place in the streets.
While a new generation of progress-ive Latin American leaders rises to power, Boudin crisscrosses twenty-seven countries throughout the Americas. He witnesses the economic crisis in Buenos Aires; works inside Chávez's Miraflores palace in Caracas; watches protestors battling police on September 11, 2001, in Santiago; descends into ancient silver mines in Potosí; and travels steerage on a riverboat along the length of the Amazon. He rarely takes a plane when a fifteen-hour bus ride in the company of unfettered chickens is available.
Including incisive analysis, brilliant reportage, and deep humanity, Boudin's account of this historic period is revelatory. It weaves together the voices of Latin Americans, some rich, most poor, and the endeavors of a young traveler to understand the world around him while coming to terms with his own complicated past. The result is a marvelous mixture of coming-of-age memoir and travelogue. Top to learn more
Best of Intentions (and Marketing), Light Reading
I bought this book at the same time that I bought --the latter the book Hugo Chavez is reported to have given to Barack Obama.It has been brilliantly marketed, and I applaud the initiative and the integrity of the self-made author, but in the larger scheme of things this is very light reading, in no way comparable to any of the works of Robert Kaplan or Robert Young Pelton, to take the two who are best in class in this particular writing domain. I list books I recommend instead of this one at the end of the review.A few details that stayed with me:Of the ten chapters, three are on Venezuela, with one each on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Equador, and Guatemala. He visited but has left for another book Cuba, Mexico,...
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June 5, 2009
(Oakton, VA United States) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 3
Because a one that isn't cold is scarcely a one at all.
