Streets with No Names: A Journey Into Central and South America

McGuire took an extended leave from his job as a Newsweek senior editor and, accompanied by his girlfriend, drove through parts of Central and South America. In this disappointing memoir of that 1987-1988 trip he chats unrevealingly about the things he saw in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, tossing in a few refried beans of history from time to time. With the exception, perhaps, of his comments on Argentina, what McGuire has to say is singularly uninformative, unevocative and uninteresting. He tells us about the high standard of living in Costa Rica, for instance, and the tin mines of Bolivia; Mexico is ``baffling, rich and appealing.'' In the chapter about Argentina he discusses the high percentage of psychotherapists in Buenos Aires and draws the obivious connection with the Dirty War that wound down in 1980. (Aug.)