ALL THE BEST IN MEXICO

by Sydneyclark 12. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1974. 320 pp. With illustrations andmaps. $7.95.

Born 1890, Sydney Clark has half as many books to his credit as years (more than 40 books, fewer than 85 years), and, unabashed, he exhibits no traces of travel lag after 60 years of global celerity. In his revised book about Mexico with new format and new pictures, he has a shrewd eye for updating material in a country with increasing influxes of American tourists, American automobiles, American luxury, and American curiosity about Mexican allurements, primitive and sophisticated.

The chief additions occur where they are most needed: Mexico City, Taxco, and Guadalajara. With expanded services in hotels, motels, restaurants, roads, and shopping centers, "The Respected Dean of American Travel Writers" adapts himself nicely to varying tastes. He will luxuriate in deluxe hotels and restaurants, and he will press in friendly fashion the hands of peso-pinching travellers hawk-eyed for bargains in hostels and hospitality.

With sophisticated eyebrow lifting, Clark regrets that perhaps 50 per cent of Americans fly to Acapulco for their entire stay. Who in his right mind would neglect Mexico City with its 8.5 million inhabitants and its art, music, architecture, and history? What a pity not to have felt the heartbeat of historic Mexico City in El Zòcalo, the enormous plaza, rimmed by America's largest cathedral and the Mexican National Palace! The Palace of Fine Arts contains a sumptuous opera house, a concert hall, a museum of popular arts, a gallery of paintings, and several salons for current exhibitions of art works.

In Taxco Clark prefers for a hotel the Posada de la Misiòn where "the whole town hangs before one's eyes like an incredible tapestry, red of hue by day from the innumerable tiled roofs, a banner of scintillant lights by night."

"A Traveller's Dream Come True." That's Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, population 1.3 million, glamorous and relaxed, with lovely plazas to be loafed in, 120 handsome fountains to be admired, women of special beauty, a whirlwind of sports (bullfights, baseball, soccer, rodeos, boxing, cock fights, and polo). Shoppers go deliciously beserk with bargain temptations in pottery, silver, copper, ceramics, leather, woodwork, furniture, textiles, and fine embroideries. If at bars and restaurants you choose not to drink for 50 or 75 cents the various tequila offerings (Margaritas, Berthas, and Sauzas), you may wave the American flag and encourage the eagle to scream at one of the four neverias, ice cream parlors, there to gloat over 32 flavors of ice cream and sherbet, sodas, malts, and sundaes, all "pasteurized, homogenized, and glamorized."

Breezy, open-minded, and honest, with a love of Mexico as profound as it is joyous, Clark is the sort of travel guide whose hand on a shoulder is knowledgeable and reliable.