Rating: 
Summary: Merci Mr. Revel
Review: Just when I was starting to hate all Frenchmen comes Jean-Francois Revel. This book is right on the money when it comes to the hypocrisy of the leftists all over the world. They all condemn our "meddling" in foreign affairs but when some poor third world country is in trouble, who do they beg to step in? That's right, the good ole' USA. He points out that anti-americanism is basically synomonous with anti-capitalism and most of the anti american sentiment is jealousy. He also points out that while Europe is quick to condemn Israel, it is they who inspired that state with the pogroms and Holocaust. He also touches on the Islamo-fascism movement and puts it in the proper perspective. This is a great read that puts leftists and socialists to shame. God Bless Jean-Francois Revel.
Rating:
Summary: Thank you, sir
Review: My first thought upon finishing this book was echoed someplace by another reviewer: "God Bless You, M Revel". I read it a second time just because it felt good. I've lived in the Soviet Union, and spent years in Western Europe 'but, but, butting' them too. Revel is such an apologist for the United States, it's almost embarrassing, but I agree with him completely about what's going on in Europe. He sees it so clearly, and nails it right on the head without apology or equivocation.
Revel was editor of the French political weekly L'Express and is a member of the Academie Française.
Rating:
Summary: Finally... a Frenchman who gets it right
Review: Revel is not your typical Frenchman... he penned a similar book in 1970 called "Without Marx or Jesus" that is essentially the same subject - rampant and virulent anti-Americanism that has existed in Europe for decades, and the empty logic behind it all. "Anti-Americanism" revisits a subject Revel knows very well, and he uses contemporary issues to destroy the same cancerous anti-US rhetoric that is completely without logic, evidence, or benefit.
Revel's book is a blistering indictment of mindless anti-US tantrums thrown down by elitist cultures across Europe. While Revel saves his best critique for his own Frenchmen, he spares no other European (or in some cases Latin American and Asian) governments that join in. Revel knows America and loves America - despite its many faults - and doesn't let the latter stand in the way of attacks that are made by both simpletons and ignoramii with little (if any) direct knowledge or experience in America. The primary culprit is the European press and especially the elites who are convinced of their superiority and knowledge of a country and its people whom they actually know nothing about. Revel explains each fallacious argument or impression of America that is shared and regurgitated across oceans and decades, refutes them all completely with facts and logic, then generally blasts the hubris behind such empty, harmful, and fratricidal bile.
I listened to this book on tape, repeatedly cheered openly in the car during select passages, then promptly bought the book in hard copy when it was finished. For anyone who knows of or has experienced anything close to the issues and impressions in this book firsthand, I urge you to give a read to a Frenchman who actually - and triumphantly - has it all right.
Rating: 
Summary: One Frenchman Can be Wrong
Review: The assumption that anti-Americanism is based on envy at falling behind the USA collides head-on with my experience of 20 years living in Europe. The bad news, my fellow Americans, is that the shoe is on the other foot. We are falling off the bottom of the chart in significant measures of well-being (our trillion-dollar weapons budget may count as a bad, not a good, to many citizens of a continent that has been bombed and occupied by the USA.)
Haven't you noticed Western Europeans practically stopped emigrating to the USA at least a generation ago? Europeans are beside themselves at the spectacle of a nation with the highest percentage of homeless and incarcerated citizens in the world, trying to run the world but not even bothering to learn about the rest of the world, expecting everyone to speak English and slavishly adopt the American way of life, when most people in Europe have had all they want of it already. It's in the poor countries, not the advanced ones, that America is still admired - mostly for the chance to earn a living here.
Ravel is right that anti-Americanism is not always rational, nor is Americanism, for that matter, but his book is a victim of its own success - the fact that it was a best-seller in France shows that our old friends are desperate to see us be our old selves again, the America that stood for human ideals. For an America on the skids to militarism and corporatism, Ravel's thesis is a sleeping pill when we need a wake-up call.
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Summary: Absolute must-read
Review: This is a superb bird's-eye view of America, its role in the history and economy of the world. You'll learn a lot things from it that you wouldn't otherwise from the mass media media or even from history courses at America's best colleges. For example, after the attacks on US embassies, Congress shot down an Act that could have prevented 9/11 -- under pressure form the Left and Arab minority (even though the words "Arab" or "Muslim" were not mentioned in it once, they k n e w well what it was about). Now, of course, "Bush hadn't done enough..." The examples of surreal hypocrisy, bigotry, and anti-Westernism from Europe, mainly France, are eye-opening and cast a different light on their recent anti-American stance. Did you know that the educational system in France is a total failure, their crime is rampant, and NOT everyone has health coverage -- all these ills always quoted in the Land of Cheese as quintessentially American?The chapter on the real effects of globalization on poor countries is by itself worth the price of the book. GREAT AMMO FOR CONVERSATIONS WITH LEFT-WINGERS AT COCKTAIL PARTIES. It'll help you deal with some of the doubts about America and the West you may have developed while being constantly exposed to leftist propaganda. I was going to say that this book should be air-dropped on the centers of anti-westernism, but then I read the review by a "tri-zeta" below (one star...), who probably has even read the book, but it was like water off a duck's back. Such people cannot be helped; radical leftism is a mental disorder. All we can do is take good care educating our kids, and that means ridding the schools from the poison of political correctness. Buy this book, read it and pass it on.
Rating: 
Summary: Commits all the rhetorical fallacies it decries
Review: Whether you agree or not with Revel's views, and in large part I think I could be persuaded (by a more reasoned argument), his presentation carries the whiff of desperation that accompanies all ideologues and partisan hacks.
This book is no doubt very popular with people who already share its worldview. I came across it looking for a reasoned and reasonable presentation of viewpoints not necessarily my own. What I found instead was a book full of logical fallacies, ad hominem attacks, straw men, and the worst of the rhetorical games that can be played.
If you want a cheerleader to get you pumping your fist in the air a la Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken or Michael Moore or Bill O'Reilly, then this book will be great for your enthusiasm, if not necessarily for your intellect.
If you're looking for a thoughtful exploration of the nature of America, her standing in the world, and the reflexivity of that relationship, look elsewhere. If you find it, please let me know, I'm still looking.
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Summary: Anti-Americanism
Review: With a title like this, and a French author, many readers will assume that this is yet another anti-American diatribe fueled by the war in Iraq. However, Revel (Without Marx or Jesus; Democracy Against Itself), a longtime eloquent advocate of American power and policies, has sounded a consistent three-part theme: liberalism will turn out to be the greatest revolution of the 20th century, "the principle function of anti-Americanism has always been . . . to discredit liberalism," and the United States has usurped Europe as the leader of the world but is not an evil empire. In this new book, written and published in France in 2002, Revel provides more examples of the "intrinsically contradictory character of passionate anti-Americanism" as practiced in Europe before and after the September 11 attacks. Revel skillfully dismantles false assumptions, outmoded theories, and outright lies-from both the political Left and the Right throughout the world. Besides his persuasive defense of the United States, he is highly critical of European policies, past and present. He concludes with a grim analysis of "hyperterrorist" activity, whose ultimate target is "democratic, secular, multi-denominational civilization." This sobering and eye-opening book is highly recommended for all libraries.-
Rating: 
Summary: French journalist thoughtfully re-examines anti-Americanism
Review: ~American readers may be surprised to discover that this putatively pro-American book reached the best-seller list in France. It is written by a French intellectual and journalist who, at nearly eighty years of age, knows the United States well (having written on the same subject nearly three decades ago in a book called Ni Jesus Ni Marx or, in English, Without Jesus or Marx ). The global position of the United States having evolved considerably since his previous book, Revel takes a fresh look~~ at this question in a larger context of debates worldwide on globalization, and not just U.S. society and foreign policy. Published about a year after the events of September 11, 2001, the book takes a fresh look at the root causes of anti-Americanism, particularly in France, but also, to some extent, in Europe and the rest of the world, although some critics in France argue that he uses the book to pursue his own hidden political bias against certain French elites and domestic policies. ~Revel examines the mixed and often contradictory dual sense of envy and contempt that the United States inspires abroad, seeking to identify which of these attitudes are objectively based. He generally contends that it was this long-established ambivalent set of feelings outside the Untied States, and not the aftermath of 9/11, which underlies the resurgence of negative attitudes to the United States. Revel's style is full of irony and paradox as he takes on subjects as diverse as attitudes~~~ on globalization, foreign fears of cultural extinction from Americanisms, and foreign policy. He sees in the anti-globalization debate a deeper resentment of American ideals of economic free-market liberalism. He challenges the demonstrators at the Seattle WTO meeting or at other anti-globalziaiton rallies which periodically sprout up, to look at the contradiction between their assault on so-called unbridled market ideology of free trade and the real attempts of the WTO to create rules of trade~~ which most developing countries are seeking to join. In an interesting final chapter, Revel blames the anti-americanism of foreign governments as actually bolstering the American superpower status which they revile. To characterize this book as pro-American simply beause it challenges a wide range of attitudes that have broadly come to be seen as anti-American is to misunderstand some of the arguments Revel makes. There is some interesting historical and sociological analysis which makes~~ reading this book a few times worthwhile if you wish to decode contemporary attitudes to the United States in a much deeper and, ultimately, more illuminating historical framework of understanding.~
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