At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and
vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of
the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking
city.
Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending
earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather
than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan
Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing
people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among
them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the
vicissitudes and triumphs of the city 's cultural, political, and social
history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish
conquest to Mexico City today--one of the world's leading cultural and
financial centers.
In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a
recurring series of topics: "Living in the City," "City Characters,"
"Shocks," "Crossings," and "Ceremonies." What he achieves, miraculously,
is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City's genius
loci, its spirit of place.