The Eagle's Shadow : Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World

Rating:
Summary: Finally,An HONEST Post 9/11 Look At America By An American
Review: The Eagle's Shadow is a book that I would recommend to everyone no matter where they live on the planet. It is a well written look at the way we Americans are perceived by people who live outside the US.

The book is very informative about how much American culture and policies affect everyone in the world. Hertsgaard has encountered people in very remote areas of the world who are quite knowledgable about American culture. American products reach every corner of the earth, thus, they affect everyone on earth. The book also explains how our policies on the environment, economics, and foreign affairs affect people throughout the world. As globalization becomes more and more prevalant, books like this one become more important in order for us to understand our role and how we affect others in this new society. We must understand our actions so that we may anticipate and change how the rest of the world reacts to us.

Although it is clear from his writing that he is in support of the left wing, that does not mean this book is "left-wing propaganda." This book looks at the flaws of American foreign policies and our sometimes "cowboy mentality" when dealing with other countries and suggests some ways that we can change that and form better relationships with the rest of the world. However, it also looks at the wonderful freedoms, wealth, and potential that exists in America and how these can be gifts to the world if used responsibly.

I think some of the people who gave bad reviews may have missed the point of the way the book was written. The book was not supposed to be a bunch of interviews without any insight or reasoning to how these perceptions about the US formed. The author gave a few specific examples of ideas that many people in the world share regardless of their geographic location. The majority of the book was about the source of these views, both good and bad. Hertsgaard takes his interviews and applies the history and the current events that shape the ideas that are expressed by the people he spoke with.

Also, I think the bad reviews illustrate the author's views that Americans are largely ignorant of things that happen outside of this country, and the policies that our goverment and corporations impliment both at home and abroad. It is very hard for someone to hear that they are ignorant in any way. This does not mean Americans are ignorant. It just means we tend to be ignorant about certain things. As illustrated in the book, this is not entirely our fault. Our media gives us a very one-sided view of the world and how it works. The vast majority of mainstream media is owned by a handful of corporations who are naturally going to give us news that benefits their profit margins and image. This is not some conspiracy idea or anything like that. For the past few years, I have almost exclusively watched BBC and ITN news (on PBS). The amount of unbiased information that I received from these sources far exceeds that of network news and even CNN. Two months ago, I got digital cable and EuroNews was one of the new channels I watch (it is like a European version of CNN). Although I do not know how it ranks with other news sources in Europe, I do know that it is the BEST television news source in the US right now. I hear ideas and events that are going on all over the world (and here in the US) that are either not mentioned or glossed over in American television news. I apologize for this rant, but I think it illustrates that we are not as knowledgable about history and current events as we should be. This has to change if we are going to enter the new globalized society that is forming right now. If not, we will be left behind.

After the 9/11 tragety, the majority of Americans felt that they had to agree with everything our government was doing. Anyone who disagreed was considered anti-American. While support to our leaders and society was needed and important, it was also important to voice honest ideas and opinions. When I think of America the first thing that comes to my mind is that I have freedoms that others don't have. The first of these is the freedom of speech. So, when people disagreed with Bush and the policies that the government wanted to implement, THEY were being the real patriots and were the most pro-American. To paraphrase Hertsgaard stated in his book, we cannot substitute a feeling of security for our rights.

Rating:
Summary: Great Idea, But Poorly Executed...
Review: In the prologue to "The Eagle's Shadow", Mark Hertsgaard - a writer and broadcaster for National Public Radio - states that, beginning in 2000, he traveled around the world interviewing foreigners for their opinions of the USA. His goal was to write a book about how people from other nations view the USA. And, given that the great majority of Americans often don't know much about their own country, much less other parts of the world, it's a worthwhile and timely topic to consider, especially since the tragic events of 9/11 last year. Unfortunately, Mr. Hertsgaard spends far more time giving his personal beliefs regarding how to improve America than actually looking at how foreigners regard the world's only surviving superpower. He starts off each chapter with a few quotes or anecdotes from people he met in Europe or Asia or Africa (for some reason many of his quotes come from South Africa), and then he quickly discards this analysis of foreigner's opinions and instead he begins describing his own beliefs about America in great detail. To cite just one example, in his chapter on the shortcomings of American democracy, he gives a few quotes about how foreigners viewed the 2000 presidential election controversy, and he then spends the rest of the chapter trying to prove that George W. Bush and the Republicans stole the presidential election from Gore. Frankly, I don't care what Mr. Hertsgaard felt about the 2000 election - instead, I wanted to learn how foreigners viewed Bush's election - which, after all, is what "The Eagle's Shadow" is supposed to be about. By the end of "The Eagle's Shadow" I knew all I wanted to know (and more) about the author's personal views of America's economic system, environmental record, greed and materialism, crooked politics, and more, but I still didn't know very much about how people from other parts of the world viewed these issues, or whether they blamed America for their own nation's troubles. Hertsgaard is a good writer and his book can be witty at times, but overall I felt that he should have advertised this book for what it really is - a platform for the author's personal beliefs about American society and politics - rather than an in-depth exploration of how foreigners view the USA. Out of five stars, I'd give this book two-and-a-half.

Rating:
Summary: Almost a first rate piece of globalization journalism...
Review: ... but not quite.

Independent journalist Mark Hertsgaard, in his latest book, "The Eagle's Shadow", tries to dispell the myth that the US is hated by the rest of the world. And, while he does an admirable job in presenting a real glimpse at world opinion (they love America and what it stands for; they just hate the arrogance of our government), the book gets bogged down in Hertsgaard's own rants against the perceived hypocrisy of America.

Despite this weakness, he does make some valid points. Americans are extremely parochial, we tend to ignore the rest of the world (with the exception of western Europe and whoever we are currently bombing), and generally very wasteful. We espouse a bizzarely schizophrenic type of politics that tries to simultaneously emphasize "family values" and "community" while supporting a soulless economic system that conspires to tear our values apart. At the same time, Hertsgaard doesn't really offer any solutions of his own other than the usual critiques and tepid support for social democracy (which has worked quite poorly in France, Germany, and Japan according to most economists)

The writing is fluid and extremely readable, which makes the book fly by at a quick pace. He has many delightful anecdotes from his travels that liven up the report and help highlight his observations... let little real reporting. In general, the book falls slightly flat.

Final appraisal? If you're looking for a quick read for a vacation, you can do far worse. For real global journalism, however, I'd recommend reading a work by a better reporter, such as Thomas Friedman or Fareed Zakaria.

(As for me, I got my copy for free. Hertsgaard spoke at my campus, and bet the audience that none of the students could name the prime minister of Japan. I was the only one who could name Junichiro Koizumi... a sad state of affairs, given that I was surrounded by Political Science students, who should know the head of the second largest economy in the world. At least I recieved a signed copy of The Eagle's Shadow for being the only one.)

Rating:
Summary: A careful snapshot of American flaws
Review: Democracy is a work in progress. On that note, "The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World," by Mark Hertsgaard is a careful snapshot of what people outside the United States consider "American flaws." Still and all, the author is quick to report that throughout his travels he discovered a remarkable paradox...that nearly all the foreign critics admired our wealth and longed to come here.

America is a subject that never fails to get people talking, according to Hertsgaard. The world harbors plenty of complaints about us...particularly the Bush administration, he adds. The heavy-handed invasion of Iraq, the withdrawal from the Kyoto Treaty, the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty and our refusal to join the International Criminal Court top the list of complaints. Moreover, the author reports that, "no one wraps self-interest in moral superiority quite like Americans do."

America is without question the richest and most powerful nation in the world...but its glaring ignorance of the rest of the planet reflects badly on the United States, according to Hertsgaard. Include the climate of intimidation orchestrated by the Bush administration and you have the variables that explain why the United States has lost the world's admiration and respect, he adds.

Nevertheless, the critics of America all admit that we are still a land of opportunity. To this end, Hertsgaard examines our shameful treatment of Indians and Blacks...and points out that the world's proudest democracy is too self-righteous. He then concludes that the United States is a democracy in progress and urges Americans to nurture a global spirit of clarity and reason. This book is an eye-opener. It is well written and offers sound advice on how to make this great nation better.

Bert Ruiz

Rating:
Summary: Almost a first rate piece of globalization journalism...
Review: ... but not quite.

Independent journalist Mark Hertsgaard, in his latest book, "The Eagle's Shadow", tries to dispell the myth that the US is hated by the rest of the world. And, while he does an admirable job in presenting a real glimpse at world opinion (they love America and what it stands for; they just hate the arrogance of our government), the book gets bogged down in Hertsgaard's own rants against the perceived hypocrisy of America.

Despite this weakness, he does make some valid points. Americans are extremely parochial, we tend to ignore the rest of the world (with the exception of western Europe and whoever we are currently bombing), and generally very wasteful. We espouse a bizzarely schizophrenic type of politics that tries to simultaneously emphasize "family values" and "community" while supporting a soulless economic system that conspires to tear our values apart. At the same time, Hertsgaard doesn't really offer any solutions of his own other than the usual critiques and tepid support for social democracy (which has worked quite poorly in France, Germany, and Japan according to most economists)

The writing is fluid and extremely readable, which makes the book fly by at a quick pace. He has many delightful anecdotes from his travels that liven up the report and help highlight his observations... let little real reporting. In general, the book falls slightly flat.

Final appraisal? If you're looking for a quick read for a vacation, you can do far worse. For real global journalism, however, I'd recommend reading a work by a better reporter, such as Thomas Friedman or Fareed Zakaria.

(As for me, I got my copy for free. Hertsgaard spoke at my campus, and bet the audience that none of the students could name the prime minister of Japan. I was the only one who could name Junichiro Koizumi... a sad state of affairs, given that I was surrounded by Political Science students, who should know the head of the second largest economy in the world. At least I recieved a signed copy of The Eagle's Shadow for being the only one.)

Rating:
Summary: Listening to the rest of the world
Review: Author Hertsgaard, in his odyssey around the world, recorded impressions of the ordinary citizens he met. Some of these foreigner's perceptions of the US will enfuriate Americans, others will fascinate. But all of them make clear the essential point of this book: that we need to pay attention to the rest of the inhabitants of this planet. America, notes Hertsgaard, is their shining symbol of freedom, and equally their symbol of wealth and glamor, gluttony and selfishness. Although the American people are admired and envied, our leadership is often scorned and feared. Let the voices of Hertsgaard's correspondents explain the causes of these contradictions. Then reflect upon their concerns. Hertsgaard's own voice in "The Eagle's Shadow" shows some honest self-examination and critique of American policy both foreign and domestic. In the xenophobia and pseudo-patriotic hysteria of today's post-911 political climate, there are those who would label any criticism "unAmerican" or even "treasonous". The author confronts the creeping Sovietization of American media and politics which seek to demonize dissent. And he explodes the myth of the "liberal" press. Although he skewers the hypocrisy of both major Parties, it is the current administration which comes most under scrutiny. Chapter Eight, "The Tragedy of American Democracy" ought to be read by every American citizen. For those who are interested in this book, I also recommend Cooley's "Unholy Wars".

Rating:
Summary: MUST READ for concerned citizens seeking answers
Review: This book should be required reading for ALL high school students. It is a quick and simply laid out book for both a reader who wants a good introduction on current events and at the same time detailed enough for an experienced political analyst.

I am an American who has been living in London for 2 years. I have to say that my "real" education about America began in London. It takes an outsider (or someone well travelled) to shead a light on what is special about this country. As the author paraphrases Jefferson, "Every man has two countries. His own and America." Yet, most Americans know very little about not only other countries but their own. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. Educate yourself. Don't be scared by learning something "not nice".

If I can only write one thing to inspire readers to read this book, it is that the 2001 "USA Patriot Act" has taken away 50% of our constitutional rights. Read about it here and then you will be armed and hopefully inspired to do something about it. Don't let your country spiral downwards into a state where 1% of the citizens make all the (wrong) choices and the rest of the poor shmucks put on an army uniform and die for "patriotism" (whatever that means these days.) Put a brake on the evil that is threatening to destroy our great land: consumerism, appathy, ignorance and hypocracy and worst of all, blind military power.

Rating:
Summary: Of 400+ Books on National Security, This Is 1 of 3 Tops
Review:

This review has been edited (giving up 14 votes) to eliminate an inappropriate and premature designation of Howard Dean as "the one". Regardless of who helps America to regain its balance, this book is 1 of 3 utterly brilliant contributions that everyone should buy and read and discuss.

As the only reviewer for Amazon who focuses exclusively on national security non-fiction, across the categories of information; intelligence; emerging threats; strategy & force structure; blowback, international relations, and dissent; and US political, leadership, and the future of life; I want to say quite clearly that I regard this book as one of the three "must reads" for every American between now and November 2004. The other two are #1 William Greider, "The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy", and #2, Jonathan Schell, "The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People."

This book is solid, serious truth-telling. Those reviewers, including the so-called professional editorial reviewers, who demean this book are simply revealing their narrow self-centered arrogance--precisely the quality in many Americans that is most distressing to the rest of the world. I find it of considerable importance that this book is favorably considered by the major intellectual newspapers and magazines across Europe and in the US, and including The Economist, the Christian Scientist Monitor, and Salon.com.

Easy to read, well-organized, this is a story, not a documentary, and it should be appreciated in that light. On page 10 the book's main argument is perfectly captured by a quote from a South African: "we know everything about you [Americans] and you know nothing about us." Therein lies the problem. As the author notes later in the book, after a review of the decrepitude of both our media and our educational systems in relation to foreign affairs and national security, "Ignorance is an excuse, but it is no shield."

Although I have reviewed many other books that have much more detail and are more documentary in nature, I give this author credit for telling a story that is comprehensible and compelling to the normal citizen, one already disadvantaged by a mediocre news services and functionalist schools that do not teach, as I do, that the world has 32 complex emergencies (failed states), 66 countries distressed by tens of millions of displaced persons, 33 countries with massive starvation as a daily fact of life, 59 countries with plagues and epidemics this very day. There are also 18 genocide campaigns that everyone is ignoring, this very day, massive water scarcity, energy scarcity at the poverty level, and corruption and censorship across 80 and 62 countries. America has no clue....it is not only the average citizen that is ignorant, but the average elected official and the average federal bureaucrat as well. This book helps remedy that situation.

The author does a fine job of distilling both a broad literature and a broad survey of foreign views through direct interview, and it is a job good enough to put this book into my "top three" for the year.

I will end by saying that this book persuaded me that the US has become a Third World nation, a lower-tier disadvantaged nation, in many respects. Apart from the critical infrastructure, which has not been refurbished in a quarter century because of the fraud perpetuated on the public by deregulation, and the massive poverty, prisons, poor health, and so on, what we have in America today is massive injustice and a massive concentration of wealth so outrageous that in any other country it would have led to a violent revolution.

This book has persuaded me that America needs not one, but two Truth & Reconciliation Commissions. We need a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, ideally managed by Colin Powell, to investigate the perversion of both capitalism and democracy in the US, and to outline a way forward such as William Greider discusses in "The Soul of Capitalism." We also need, even more desperately, a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, ideally managed by Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew, to catalog and acknowledge, and apologize to the world for, the war crimes, the unethical behavior, and the enormous political, social, cultural, economic, demographic, and natural resource costs we have imposed on the world through our ignorance and arrogance.

There are six billion people out there, waiting to see how America handles the emerging Reichstag known as the neo-conservative Cheney-Bush regime. We cannot kill them nor contain them with force--as Jonathan Schell notes in "The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People," there is one path and one path only toward a bright future: non-violent cooperative collective power.

If every American reads this book, and every American votes in an informed manner in November 2004, we can save the world and in the process save America.

Rating:
Summary: Required Reading!
Review: Mark Hertsgaard is a journalist, an astute observor and communicator, and a very fine writer. Hertsgaard is also an American and his driver for gathering the information for this book appears to be a need to produce a 'wakeup call' for Americans. Well documented with conversations with people around the world, this book sets out to show how the people in the countries of the world relate to (and even mimic) Americans as people while finding our government, our consumerism, and our foreign policy (read empiricism) distasteful. Rather than driving this idea to a dulling end, Herstgaard manages to show how Americans can learn from the perceptions of people outside the USA, can examine the flaws present in abundance in our governmental control of the media, our "dumbing down" of our information about the rest of the world condition (social and environmental) by the corporate emesis of rampant consumerism and "fluff news" that flood not only our films but also our television, magazines and, sadly, our newspapers. He submits strong warnings of the sequelae of ignoring fundamental issues of human rights in our allowing the corporate homogenation of the world, depriving the growing lower class of jobs and much needed medical and monetary support. He writes about the embarassment of the 2000 presidential elections, the rush to war post 911, the frighteningly quick passage of the Patriot Act which dangerously impinges on human rights, and the growing negligence of the Global Warming Effect and other issues of Environmental significance.

But while Hertsgaard is complete in his serious warnings about the current state of the American Mind, he does not look at the future with a hopeless eye. "The first challege for Americans is to do a better job of informing ourselves about what is going on around the world and our nation's role in it. This won't be easy, because the most readily available information comes from the media......If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them." He concludes his excellent book with a question: "Why can't America be wise as well as powerful, generous as well as rich, magnanimous as well as great? For all its flaws, this country remains a place where amazing things can happen."

This book comes at a critical time for the United States. Yes, Hertsgaard has a soapbox presentation, but reading a man's commitment to the betterment of America should be required reading for our populace who would rather sit numbly in front of mindless TV 'reality' and game shows than carefully observe what is happening in the global situation. Americans are not presented as Bad Guys, just uninformed lazy minds who need to change priorities before it is too late.

Rating:
Summary: This sophomore essay deserves a D minus
Review: Well I've just read all of the reviews of this book and feel compelled to write even though I don't think I can add very much...the critics of this book have consistently complained that the author essentailly ignored the mission statement of his book and simply used the concept as a vehicle for self-expression, and the lovers of the book have almost completely ignored this fact and applaud the author because they agree with him politically. I get the feeling many of the latter group have not even read the book. I, unfortunately, have read the book, much like a captive audience I was stuck on a train with nothing else to do. It is unbeleivable that this book made it through the editors of a major publisher in this shoddy form. It is a testament to the leftiness of the industry that this thing made it to press, and then to paperback! This is a sophomore essay not the work of a seasoned world-traveler!! If you want to learn about what the world thinks of America read any or all of Robert Kaplans books. This guy Hertgaard could'nt carry Kaplan's notebook one dusty mile down the OLd Silk Road. Oh, and when is someone going to write a book for Europeans about what WE think about YOU. Now I'm no right-wing ideologue shouting "Remember Normandy!" but I think many Euro's could use a wake up call: American's think you are a spoiled ingrateful lazy bunch of brats, and we tend not to respect your opinions because you seem to forget one major important fact: WE MADE YOU. We sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives and spent many billions of dollars protecting and re-building you through and after two savage world wars. You are free to snipe and snicker in a social democratic post-historical paradise because WE footed the bill. And what allowed us the resources and spirit to do this...our crass consumerist capatilist machine that you so despise. But go ahead, bite the hand.