Purchase
American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville
Bernard-Henri Levy
A look at America
Random House
January 2006
320 pages ISBN: 1400064341 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
What does it mean to be an American, and what can America
be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher
and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling
throughout the country in the footsteps of another great
Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in
America remains the most influential book ever written
about our country. The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating,
wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we
know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from
Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa,
Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the
special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of
freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball),
the prison system, the "return of ideology" and the health
of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits
and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as
the dangers posed by "the tyranny of the majority,"
explores what Europe and America have to learn from each
other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye
and a philosopher’s depth. Through powerful interview-based portraits across the
spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to
clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon
Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a
tapestry of American voices--some wise, some shocking. Both
the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life
are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge
throughout, from the crucial choices America faces today to
the underlying reality that, unlike the "Old World,"
America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to
worship, earn, and live as one wishes--a place, despite
all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an
actual practice. At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world
perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of
themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer
has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the
meaning of America.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|