From Publishers Weekly
When Winter, a 22-year-old college graduate from Texas, suddenly found himself in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2000 with no job and about $2,000 of savings, he never thought the importance of the tango, a century-old dance, would reshape his life as a man and as a writer of this insightful, comic memoir. He falls under the influence of the regulars of Niño Bien, a ramshackle
milonga, a club where the tango is danced amid laughter, flirting and the raucous music of the
bandoneón and the guitar. In his colorful, energetic descriptions of characters like Luis, the club owner, and El Tigre, a sailor turned tango instructor, Winter connects the dots between the social and political history of Argentina and tango music, chronicling the faithful bond between the pair. One element of the travelogue that captures interest is the strict code governing tango society, as El Tigre advises the author: The first thing you have to know [is] that in the tango, the man controls everything. Along with a hit-and-miss flirtation, Warner learns about the passion, lust and romantic nature of the tango that seduced a country. Winter, now an editor at
USA Today, provides readers with an outrageously funny tale of dance steps and travel.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
An American reporter in Argentina struggles to learn the tango by night, while by day covering the country as it slides into financial crisis and revolution.
After moving to Argentina on a whim, Brian Winter, a young American reporter, embarks on a crusade to learn that devilishly difficult dance that demands both discipline and passion: the tango. While he dances the night away in the milongas with the fiery denizens of Buenos Aires, the country around them collapses, gripped by inflation, street riots, and revolution.
In a book that is part travelogue and part history, the author evokes his immersion in a dark underworld. He visits old dance salons, brothels, and shacks on the dusty Pampa, searching for the tango's shady origins in the hope that understanding may help him dance better. Along the way, he discovers that the tango, with its tales of jealousy, melodrama, and lost glory, may hold the secret to the country that is inexplicably disintegrating before his eyes.
