What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be
today?To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and
journalist Bernard-Henri Levy 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 isAmerican 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, Levy 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,
Levy 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.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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