Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem (Hoover Institution Press Publication)

Rating:
Summary: Compelling But Ponderously Heavy
Review: This book is essential to understanding the hostility to America rooted deep in European, and especially German, culture. The book places anti-Americanism in historical context in five separate free-standing, yet mutually supporting essays. The book is difficult reading given the number of references to obscure writers, philosophers, and activists who are little known outside extremist European political circles.

Each chapter deals with some different aspect of anti-Americanism, and chapter five also discusses the parallels between anti-American and anti-globalization rhetoric in Europe. The best chapter is chapter three, "Democratic War, Repressive Peace" in which Berman discusses the fundamental logical problems and lack of factual basis supplied by leaders of the anti-American movement, or as the author succinctly states in the first page of the chapter: "Drawing on long-standing cultural conditions rather than on contemporary conditions, anti-Americanism is trapped in a world of imagination. It is ideological in the sense that the ideals to which it adheres are never tested against hard facts." Numerous examples are cited to prove his assertion, and the chapter is probably the single most concise indictment of the hypocrisy present in the anti-American movement in Europe that I have yet seen.

The book lost a star for chapter five (on anti-globalization), which becomes a tangent to the book more that a topical discourse on anti-Americanism per se. He also spends quite a bit of time on the writings and political views of Arundhati Roy, a bombastic Indian anti-American propagandist. Although she is read more in Europe than in the US, her influence seems blown out of all proportion to her actual relevance, which is essentially nil.

This is a good and noble effort, although I think that "Anti-Americanism" by Jean Francois Revel is a better overall book, and is certainly more readable.