American Vertigo

Starred review from December 12, 2005
Lévy's journey through this "magnificent, mad country" is indeed vertiginous as he loops from coast to coast and back, mounting to the heights of wealth and power—interviewing the likes of Barry Diller and John Kerry—and plunging into the depths of poverty and powerlessness, in urban ghettoes and prisons. (In this last, he truly follows Tocqueville, whose assignment in the young America was to visit prisons.) Each scene is quite short, which is frustrating at first, but soon the quick succession of images creates a jostling, animated portrait of America, full of resonances and contradictions. Sharon Stone in her luxurious home, railing about the misery of the poor, is quickly followed by Lévy's chat with a waitress in a Colorado town struggling to make ends meet. A gated retirement community in Arizona seems to the author like a prison, while Angola, a prison in Louisiana, has lush grounds that resemble a retirement community's. Lévy (Who Killed Daniel Pearl
), the celebrated French thinker and journalist, is a master of the vignette and the miniature, whether explaining why he could feel at home in Seattle or pondering whether Diller's apparent amorality is "too flaunted to be completely sincere." In France, where anti-Americanism has been so popular, Lévy has been an anti-anti-Americanist, and while he finds serious fissures in this country's social landscape, in the end he is an optimist about the future of a country he admires for the richness of its culture and its political vision.

February 15, 2006
In this wide-ranging exploration, Lé vy ("Who Killed Daniel Pearl"), the French filmmaker, philosopher, and journalist, attempts to paint a portrait of contemporary America and Americans. Interviewing strippers, prison guards, college students, clergymen, doctors, writers, actors, and politicians (among many others), he travels across the country observing and analyzing a nation he has gradually come to respect and like. He compares his task to that of another Frenchman -Alexis de Tocqueville -whose classic "Democracy in America" (1835) clearly and sympathetically differentiated American culture from European society by noting how the ethic of individualism and the value of political freedom helped create a more pure form of democracy. Unlike Tocqueville, however, Lé vy fills his account with a preponderance of criticism about almost everyone and everything: European anti-Americanism, Bush -s -small-mindedness, - the Christian Right, and the -Puritanism - of MoveOn.org. Although his often page-long sentences and dash-filled thought fragments are full of passion and commitment, they may also confuse readers. (And why does he call Pat Buchanan a -Jeffersonian - and Dick Cheney a -Jacksonian -?) His interviews often come across as monolog rather than dialog. Many readers may feel more vertigo from his shoot-from-the-hip commentary than Lé vy himself experienced in his travels. For larger libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ "9/1/05.]" -Jack Forman, San Diego Mesa Coll. Lib."

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2006
Our schizophrenic relationship with France has endured for more than two centuries. Levy, a widely praised French journalist, philosopher, and activist, has long harbored a deep affection and admiration for aspects of American culture. Unlike many French intellectuals, he has resisted the attraction of totalitarian dogmas, so he is particularly attracted to American devotion to individual freedom. So Levy's observations, compiled as he tried to retrace the steps of Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century observer of America, deserve to be taken seriously on both sides of the Atlantic. In his cross-country "road trip," Levy visited sites as diverse as prisons (including the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba), a brothel, an Amish town, and the Air Force Academy. He provides fascinating vignettes, covering his encounters with both ordinary and prominent Americans from a variety of backgrounds who hold often-startling viewpoints. The result is an engaging but often-disturbing portrait of our nation from an eloquent, brutally honest foreigner who wishes our country well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)