American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville
3/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
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.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker and author of over thirty books including The Genius of Judaism, American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? His writing has appeared extensively in publications throughout Europe and the United States. His documentaries include Peshmerga, The Battle of Mosul, The Oath of Tobruk and Bosna! Lévy is co-founder of the antiracist group SOS Racisme and has served on diplomatic missions for the French government.
Read more from Bernard Henri Lévy
The Empire and the Five Kings: America's Abdication and the Fate of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Vertigo: Traveling to the Great & the Gross Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to American Vertigo
Related ebooks
Stepping Westward: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Around the world in Seventy Years: Decamping Communism for the other side of the Iron Curtain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe the Cubans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France: The Political Thought of Mably Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmong the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Writing for Justice: Victor Séjour, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, and the Age of Transatlantic Emancipations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Victorian Age in Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Future in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The American Eton: Moses Waddel's Famed Willington Academy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Tennyson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Victorian Age In Literature: "There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCain's Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imperial nostalgia: How the British conquered themselves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5McTeague Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the French Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nietzsche the Thinker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWriting Beat and Other Occasions of Literary Mayhem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Future in America - A Search After Realities (The original unabridged and illustrated edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Adam Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Indecent Liberties Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPortraits - Power and Glory Vis-a-Vis Form and Contentment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Land of Contrasts: A Briton's View of His American Kin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Political Ideologies For You
A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why We're Polarized Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The U.S. Constitution with The Declaration of Independence and The Articles of Confederation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Communist Manifesto: Original Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mein Kampf: English Translation of Mein Kamphf - Mein Kampt - Mein Kamphf Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quest for Cosmic Justice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anarchist Cookbook Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The January 6th Report Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for American Vertigo
59 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frenchman Bernard-Henri Levy looks at the U.S. through the eyes of a European: there is the bemusement over the flag fetish, when you see more than a hundred in just a couple of blocks in a New England town; America's undeniable belief in itself. So many of the new-fangled social and technological phenomena are very closely observed and thought-provokingly parsed.Levy explores America's various approaches to international relations; it's a subject close to very many Europeans' hearts. He posits the following threads:Jeffersonian: isolationist - wishes to avoid foreign entanglementsJacksonian: the desire to respond to a foreign attack. It seems absurd, Levy writes, to attack Baghdad for the 9/11 attacks, but it's perfectly fit to attack Kabul.Hamiltonians: these folk want to regulate international trade (cf Kuwait and the First Gulf War)Wilsonians: hold the idea that the U.S. is accountable for world order and welfare.Levy contends that those who would label the US an evil empire know nothing about the country, or about evil, or about empires. He says America is neither of these. He writes that it's simply a big, powerful place that believes in itself, and sometimes this belief has come at the expense of its minorities. One further telling point I came across: the 9/11 attacks were timed and targeted to throw off Palestinian-Isreali progress. Pure and simple in his view.It's always interesting to me to see how our partners in the modern world see us. This is a very useful volume on that score.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Levy has sold himself on his own cliche of America. The reality is our problems are far deeper than our surface ones. I did not find that he had any new insights that have not been covered by Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, and countless others.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5BHL is no Tocqueville, but well worth readingIn this refreshing take on contemporary American culture, French journalist and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy (known simply as BHL in France) retraces the steps of his compatriot Alexis de Tocqueville who almost 2 centuries ago traversed what was America then and wrote his 2-volume treatise called "Democracy in America".From the outset, it may sound like some sort of Borat-style charade, but to be sure, BHL is not some clueless fool bumbling around the country, I'd rate his knowledge of America on par with America's top scholars. The result of which is a travelogue that is rich in content based on a solid foundation of historical knowledge.The first two-thirds of the book is written very much in memoir form. Stories encountered by BHL on his 1-year journey around the country beginning from the northeast through the heartland to the west coast and looping around the south and southeast. For anyone who has been closely following American culture and politics the past 10 years will recognize the familiar themes of rising obesity, conspicuous consumption habits, religiously fundamentalism, gun toting militarism, lingering racial tensions, alarming incarceration and execution rates, and gross inequalities between rich and poor.If you read just the first two-thirds of "American Vertigo", you would think that BHL was your typical anti-American European socialist. However, in the last third of the book, BHL reveals that he is actually very optimistic about America's future writing: "I can't manage to convince myself of the collapse, heralded in Europe, of the American model" (p.246). Why so optimistic? BHL believes that "despite everything, you can still breathe freely today" (p.256). America to BHL still represents the land of opportunity, the city on the hill, however mythical that may be.In the words of Tocqueville, BHL believes in America because of it's unwavering dedication to the democratic principles of "individualism" and the "tyranny of the majority". America is everything, anything and nothing all in one. It's Sam Huntington and Francis Fukiyama but also Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. It's New York and San Francisco, but it's also Detroit and Pittsburgh. It's Bill Gates and Michael Dell but also Ross Perot and Kenneth Lay. It's Richard Nixon but also JFK. It's Brittany Spears but also Sheryl Crow. It's Rosanne Barr but also Sharon Stone. It's Muhammad Ali but it's also Mike Tyson. It's Michael Moore but its also Ann Coulter. It's McDonald's but it's also Wolfgang Puck. Only in America as they say can Oprah Winfrey and Jon Stewart become more influential than all the politicians combined.Does BHL get it all right? No, but he comes pretty darn close. Nor should we expect him to get it all right. Let us not forget that BHL is a foreigner after all, a French philosopher heavy on the French deconstructionisms of Sartre, Foucault, Strauss, and Derrida. That he gets some things wrong about the essence of America is not the point. What matters most is what a man of BHL's stature abroad, his learned background, what he thinks and observes of this "American experiment" called Democracy and why he thinks it will fail or succeed.BHL is no Tocqueville, if you're looking for Tocqueville, get "Democracy in America". If you want to view contemporary Americanism through a unique lens, get "American Vertigo".
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a book I've been meaning to read for a long time but it took me a while to get my hands on the original French version. I thought that a book written by a French intellectual and philosopher offering ruminations about America deserved to be read in French... A friend finally got me a copy in France last month and I took it with me on my around-the-world trip this month.Bernard-Henry Levy (henceforth, BHL) is somewhat of a celebrity in France (perhaps the only country in the world where a philosopher can become a celebrity). In recent years, he has moved away from writing "pure" philosophical works towards a more journalistic role. In 2002 he spent almost a year, travelling to Pakistan several times to investigate the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter that was beheaded by Muslim fanatics. He summarised his findings in a book (Who Killed Daniel Pearl?) in which he minces no words when describing the lawlessness of the Pakistani regime. I vividly recall one sentence from that book (and I'm quoting from memory): "of all the delinquent countries in the world, Pakistan is the most delinquent of all". This was written, mind you, at at time when Pakistan was the US's primary ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.BHL embarked on a year-long journey arounnd the US and wrote his observations in American Vertigo. The project was financed by the Atlantic Monthly journal, which asked BHL to follow the footsteps of Alexis De Tocqueville, the French historian who travelled to America in the early 19th century and wrote an analysis of American civic life in the monumental work Democracy in America, considered one of the classic books in political thought. The idea was for BHL to retrace Tocqueville's journey and provide observations about life in America almost 200 years later. (On a side note: why don't I get offers to travel the world for free for a year? I guess my ruminations are not, sadly, as in demand as BHL's...).The book turned out to be very different from what I thought it would be like. Instead of a long philosophical treatise about the US, the book is a collection of short vignettes, each 2-3 pages long, about the various encounters BHL had during his journey. Having said that, the last third of the book is a heavy-going "summary" of the journey, more typical to BHL's previous writings.The journey took place around election time in 2004. BHL covered many walks of American life: politics (he met, among others, Obama, Clinton and Kerry), Hollywood (Sharon Stone, Warren Beatty), prisons (the original aim of Tocqueville was to study the American penitentiary system), entertainment (Vegas, a brothel in Nevada), sports (Baseball Hall of Fame), religion (from born-again evangelists to Brooklyn Jews to Mormons), US history (Mount Rushmore) and much much more. Each vignette describes shortly what he experienced and then expands on the subject by putting it into context. "The big picture" is a motive that runs throughout the book, with BHL trying to frame each experience within the theory he builds for the American experience.And the theory is as follows: America is indeed an empire, but not of the sort Rome was. Its fierce protection of individualism, coupled with a deep sense of integrity and accountability, make it a power to be reckoned with despite the predictions of its decline. It is a land of contradictions: puritanism coupled with promiscuity, religious fervour coupled with materialism of the lowest kind, isolationism coupled with a sense of global duty. As dysfunctional as America is, BHL believes it will endure. He is an "anti anti-American" and repeatedly berates his compatriots for being so automatically against anything American and for falsely predicting the failure of the American model.As impartial as BHL tries to be, his love for America is apparent throughout the book (although I think he will refuse to admit "love" is the appropriate word). He writes lovingly about Seattle, calling it the one place he would choose to live in if he were to move to the US, only to trade it later in the book with Savannah, Georgia. All in all, I don't think he was successful in "retracing the footsteps" of Tocqueville, but nevertheless this is still an interesting and stimulating book.