Product Description

In the billowing white dust of Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, a woman, bewildered and emotional asks Why do they hate us? Many people throughout the world do hate America. Understand their rational - and irrational - feelings in this timely exploration of America as seen through non-Western eyes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250992 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Independent
"Required reading"

Noam Chomsky
"Contains valuable information and insights that we should know, over here, for our own good, and the world's."

Times Higher Education Supplement
"Packed with tightly argued points."

Customer Reviews

Eye-opening and Highly Relevant
I found this book browsing in a bookshop and was instantly caught by the narrative. It makes no bones about being heavily one-sided and defends America very infrequently, but it's scope is scholarly and its arguements delivered by and large very well.

Despite its political and philosophical content, it is also highly readable. I think it is difficult to discount as a piece of anti-US propaganda as it eloquently disects everything from US TV and media concerns stifling normal debate within the US to the heavy handedness and undemocratic nature of US foreign policy.

Truly enlightening, and I am sure it should be read by every American and for that matter European, as much of the subject matter applies to many former colonial countries too.

I think you've missed the point...
People seem to be getting their knickers in a knot about this book being polemic but the facts remain that many people DO hate America. In many very fundamental ways this IS as a result of US foreign policy and the way in which the cultural artefacts (ie movies, music) that they export reinforce an often offensive image of 'white is right' and 'might is right'.

Professors Sardar and Davies are highly educated individuals who are underlining the way in which American culture CAN BE and IS interpreted by the outside world. This does not mean THEY hate America. It means they are able to recognise areas in which America let's itself down in the eyes of the world.

I have read blogs from US soldiers in Iraq saying that they read the book to remind themselves how 'outsiders' view them, to understand what has gone wrong and why America seems so loathed. Noam Chomsky himself has recommended American's read this book to see how the world perceives them. It is the blindness of the American superstate to opinions like those articulated by Sardar and Davies that causes them to continue blithely exporting the wrong message around the globe.

This is an important book precisely because it is polemic. The American culture machine roles out polemic material every day. Hatred is what breeds in retaliation.

Please do not continue to portray this book as 'Why People SHOULD Hate America'. The purpose of this book is to hold up a mirror to the flaws of the US. After September 11 many people did ask 'Why Do People Hate America?' Sardar and Davies are simply trying to offer a possible answer...

Not "America-bashing"
...unless you define "America bashing" as any anthropological attempt to understand America as such. As the sayin goes: The truth may set you free, but first it'll piss you off. This book was required reading for a course I am taking on American Studies, and I fully enjoyed reading it. It presents something for people on both sides of the Atlantic. For Americans it gives them an insight into how others may view them, and for Europeans and other foreign nationalities it provides a window into what shaped the popular culture and attitudes of the US. For being a bridge of understanding I'm giving this book 5 stars.
That being said - it should be noted that both these eloquent authors have anthropological backgrounds, and as such tend to boil the question/title of the book down to anthropological answers. That may have worked if American were a democracy, and the populace shaped by this popular culture actually ruled. America is not, and Americans do not. As in Europe and the rest of the world, the US is a Representative Democracy, meaning the people hand over their will to an elect group every four years or so. This elect group (gov't) are the ones who make the foreign policy and carry out the decisions and action which are the prime reason Americans are "hated" by some. That this elect group also suffers from 'knowledgeable ignorance' (which the authors diagnose Americans with), this book has not managed to convince me. The premise that world sentiment 'against' the US has it's roots in prevalent public attitudes within the US, is the only short comming to this book, in my opinion. But regardless of whether it fully accomplishes to answer the title question, the anthropological studies within should be, as others have said, 'required reading'.