Volume 48, Number 6 · April 12, 2001
The French Difference
By Tony Judt
Les cartes de la Franceà l'heure de la mondialisation, a dialogue with Dominique Moisi
by Hubert Védrine
Paris: Fayard, 190 pp., FF95 (paper)
Forty years ago, the French writer François Mauriac, whose distaste for America was unclouded by firsthand knowledge, wrote of it: 'This nation ...is more foreign to me than any other. I've never been there...what is the point? It has done more than just visit us; it has transformed us.'[1] Mauriac was right: 'Américanisation' has contributed to the transformation of his country, and not always for the better. But something comparable has happened to every other European country (England above all) and most of the rest of the globe. This has stirred deep resentment in various quarters, and the backlash of anti-American feeling takes many forms.
Review, 4001 words
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