HIGHly Recommended

Next time someone tells you it's all about Bush, tell them to get a hold of a copy of James W. Ceaser's Reconstructing America (The Symbol of America in Modern Thought), which — like Philippe Roger's The American Enemy (L'Ennemi américain) — goes through two and a half centuries of history all the way back to 18th (!) century intellectuals and élites to show how aware (sic) these lucid beings were of Americans' cluelessness (check out the back cover, the table of contents, and the excerpt).

Ceaser (government and foreign affairs, Univ. of Virgina) distinguishes between the "metaphysical or symbolic" America (the notion of America as a materialistic, decadent country) and the "real" America (America as a preeminent bastion of freedom and opportunity). The negative concept, he argues, originated in Europe — primarily in Germany and France. To flesh out this idea, he traces the thought of pertinent Germans from Hegel to Heidegger ("with passages through Spengler and Junger") and the French from Buffon to Bandrillard ("with passages through Maistre and Kojeve"). An engagingly written excursion through American and European political and intellectual history. this book touches on an important issue in contemporary American society: not only how other countries see America but the negative attitudes prevalent among certain groups, including academics here at home. In view of the climate of opinion surrounding Waco and Oklahoma City [the book was written in 1997], this book's positive appraisal, written in a style accessible to the lay reader, could be of interest to a wide readership. (Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washingon, D.C.)

When the reviewer mentions "the climate of opinion surrounding Waco and Oklahoma City", it is because James W. Ceaser wrote this book in 1997. But by no means should you let the decade-old publication prevent from buying the book. Au contraire: it shows that when the Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia decided to write the book — due to being fed up with the prevalent anti-Americanism (abroad as well as stateside) — it was during the supposedly warm and cuddly Clinton days of yore! Incidentally, he is in no way a polemicist; his book is written in an entirely matter-of-fact manner. (On my Christmas list is Ceaser's more recent Nature and History in American Political Development…)

Update: Grayp provides a link to a more recent James W. Ceaser article…