L'obsession anti-américaine

by Jean François Revel

"After the 9/11 attack on the United States, the brief moment of global sympathy for America soon began giving way to blame. Angered by these assaults on a nation he knows and admires, the distinguished French intellectual Jean-Francois Revel has come to America's defense in Anti-Americanism, a book that (paradoxically, given his country's especially vehement attacks on the U.S. and its policies) spent several weeks late last year on top of France's bestseller list." "Revel sees much anti-Americanism simply as anticapitalism in disguise on the part of those - in Europe and the rest of the world - who are still committed to doctrines that, at heart, are illiberal and even totalitarian. In probing the origins of the notion that America is the source of all evil, he shows how these charges ultimately stem from weakness and envy on the part of those who make them and are a neurotic effort to find an easy explanation for Europe's own loss of status in the post-war era."--Jacket.