Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France |
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Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France
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by John J. Miller and Mark Molesky
Sales Rank: 454607
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$0.10
At Amazon
on 6-19-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
Published by: Doubleday October 5, 2004
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0385512198
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0385512190
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 6.5 x 1 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
National Review reporter Miller (The Unmaking of Americans) and Harvard lecturer Molesky focus quite single-mindedly on destroying what they say is the "myth" of the historical friendship between the United States and France. In doing so, they give short shrift to a few vital facts: for instance, while focusing on the French and Indian massacre of British colonists at Deerfield, Mass., in 1704, they overlook the importance of the French fleet in George Washington's great victory at Yorktown. Miller and Molesky also dismiss French policy as having a cynical underside of national self-interest, willfully overlooking the fact that all governments act out of self-interest. Thus, they call French trade barriers during the Cold War ingratitude for American aid in WWII. They accuse the French, who dare to look down on American culture, of their own "sordid cultural exports," such as the avant-garde, with its strain of nihilism. And, as the authors see it, the French, with the debacle at Dien Bien Phu, are responsible for America's quagmire in Vietnam. As one might guess, driving this revisionism is France's refusal to support the United States in its late invasion of Iraq The authors' ire, and their carefully selected and unnuanced slices of history, will convince only the already converted.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Lafayette, the Statue of Liberty, D-Day-- such symbolic shorthand for a historical alliance between France and America crumbles in the caustic viewpoint expressed by this historical review of their relationship. Miller, of the conservative National Review,^B and Molesky, a Harvard history lecturer, argue that animosity rather than amity has been the two countries' normal state of affairs, extending from the French and Indian War to the post-World War II pattern of frequent French diplomatic opposition to American foreign policy. The authors reflect on the sources of French anti-Americanism, maintaining it is, in part, because of France's resentment of its own decline as a great power and its cultural contempt for America as crass and materialistic. What may seem like the long-gone past, such as Napoleon III's pro-South policy in the Civil War, is presented as a seamless continuum to the present, representing the French proclivity for hampering the American "hyperpower," as one foreign minister recently called the U.S. Gratifying to a nationalist sensibility, Miller and Molesky's editorialized jaunt through history is fluid and opinionated. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader Reviews
For me, this book brought a whole new dimension to this country's relationship with France that was quite contrary to what I learned in school. Yes, France has always acted in it's own best interest (all countries do), but since the French and Indian Wars, through the time we won our independence and France tried to limit our our gains (because they thought we would become too powerful), through the Quasi-War (when France became the first military enemy of the US), through WW2 when our soldiers had to fight their way through Vichy French troops in North Africa to get to the Nazi's, to today when France tried to marshall the countries of Europe against our fight with terrorism, France has been blatently hostile to this country at every turn. The French seem to be trying to relive their glory days when they were *the* world power by trying to cut us down whenever and where ever possible. For some reason Americans have always put a good face on French arrogance, condescension and their bungling of their foreign affairs (Vietnam for example); choosing instead to be charmed by the art, the wine and the cheese. But for the sake of our country's well being, it's time we took the blinders off and saw France for what it really is and act accordingly. This book is an interesting read, a fast page turner and one I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in current events.
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Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France
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Updated on 6-19-2008.
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