Americans No More [Hardcover]

Georgie Anne Geyer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1996

In America, the concept of citizenship has lost all meaning. In turmoil over illegal immigration and bilingualism, the U.S. is divided by the conflicting loyalties of a citizenry too little identified with the country it has chosen. In this riveting book, Geyer, a regular commentator on PBS's Washington Week in Review and Frontline, explores the death of citizenship in an increasingly fragmented America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Well known for her 30 years of journalism, as a columnist for the United Press Syndicate and a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, Georgie Anne Geyer's analysis of the fracturing of American society draws on extensive research and discussions with academics. While she deplores illegal immigration, she is disturbed too by recent trends among legal immigrants toward resisting assimilation, to the extent even of denying the primacy of English in some cases. The result, she argues, is a profound identity crisis in the United States, a nation created by immigrants but now with its established values threatened by a continued inflow of non-Americans.

From Publishers Weekly

"I am a true universalist, appreciating every culture," syndicated columnist Geyer declares in her preface. Not surprisingly, she fears American balkanization, the valuing of group rights over individual rights and national identity, calling it "a mostly nonviolent version of Yugoslavia." Her rambling book argues that our sense of citizenship has declined, from the insipid citizenship test required for immigrants to the new movement to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections because they pay local taxes. She reprises legitimate criticisms of immigration and refugee policy but lapses into an exaggerated attack on campus multiculturalism and governmental paternalism. Though most critical of the left, Geyer argues that commercialism has also eroded citizenship. The book often reads like a series of disjointed columns, and people she approves of?e.g., opinion-researcher Daniel Yankelovich and Robert Woodson Sr. of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprises?are granted adjectives like "brilliant" or "bright." She says little about America's racial or wealth divide, nor does she find much strength in America's multiethnic reality. While her book does make some important criticisms, Geyer's first-person voice offers as much melodrama as insight.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; 1st edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871136503
• ISBN-13: 978-0871136503
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,652,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Georgie Anne Geyer is a veteran foreign correspondent and a syndicated columnist on international affairs. She is renowned for her in-depth interviews with world leaders, including Anwar Sadat, Saddam Hussein, numerous American presidents, and the elusive Fidel Castro, the subject of her controversial book Guerrilla Prince. Her 10 books also include her own fascinating autobiography, Buying the Night Flight.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even more relevant in 2003, February 25, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Americans No More (Hardcover)

I picked up this book on a whim at the airport discount bookstore for a song. When I started reading this book I was amazed how accurate Ms. Geyer had predicted the future (This book was written in 1996).

One of the most important points of the book is that the weakening and outright destruction of the idea citizenship is the crux of many of America's problems. Not race or religion as some of the other reviews claim (I wonder if they actually read the book).

I highly recommend reading this book for insights on possible ways we can avoid a balkanization of the USA. Bring back the strength of real Citizenship and strengthen this country for all of its citizens.

America needs to be a melting pot with a common thread of freedom and American ideals (read 'real' citizenship), not a collection of groups with loyalties that lie elsewhere that are constantly lobbying for their rights over the good of the individual citizen.

21 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars speaks the truth, November 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Americans No More (Hardcover)

As someone who lived in southern California for a decade, I see the truth in this book. It may be too late already, but these issues should be seriously addressed. Left-wing hysterics will be sure to hate it, but they can't stop the argument by hurling epithets and making bogus comparisons to Nazi Germany and/or Stalinist Russia

18 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If America Were To Decline: This Is How It Happens, February 20, 2000

By 

Perry Lorenz (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Americans No More (Hardcover)

American patriots will be forever grateful to Geyer for her ample contribution to reversing the decline of American citizenship. However, I doubt that people can shed their ethnicity as easily as she implies. Nor does she explain why immigrants are needed at all. Americans can give birth to the next generation of citizens, the same as all other nations. And if our citizenship is in need of repair, immigration isn't going to help.

She blames ethnic problems on a few bad men stirring up trouble. That ethnic groups have leaders, tells us nothing about what an ethnic group is and why people feel attached to their ethnic group. Nor does this book. Ethnicity is consistently disparaged as in ANM: "... all the old differences and hatreds that divided men so murderously according to tribe, clan and creed." (p46) For every "ethnic hatred" example, I could give an example of "national hatred" or "country hatred." Please note that two World Wars were carried out by dozens of COUNTRIES not CLANs. What is an ethnic group? It is a group that customarily intermarries. That is simply the social nature of humans. What is evil about that?

What is a nation? Unfortunately, this is not discussed. But I suggest it is one or more CLOSELY related ethnic groups, fully assimilable, that considers itself to be one people, of a right to sovereignty, independence and self government.

The use of the term "hatred" stops discussion and thought processes. At the base of any ethnic conflict are people wanting to survive. People want their families and their ethnic groups to survive because these are the carriers of their genetic and cultural heritage. Land, independence, and security are key elements of survival.

ANM: "When a multinational society has to accommodate so many different demands, which can include court procedures and public papers in many languages, in addition to actual changes in the laws to suit various cultural tastes, a country is inevitably bound not only to divide into conflictive camps but also to decline economically; there is simply no way that a country can with such expensive and disruptive demands, keep up with the much more easily functioning one-culture, one-language, and one-heritage countries." (p47,48) Is that the same as a homogeneous society? This gem of wisdom should be developed into a whole chapter. If one-heritage countries are so advantageous, why should we discourage their formation? Why don't we pursue it for ourselves, so far as is practical? If Bosnia wants to form one-heritage countries, why does this book oppose it?

ANM: "Jim Daton, a political scientist and futurist at the University of Hawaii... saying in contemptuous terms about America: 'Nothing will be more rare in the future than a white person, and nothing may be less important than the white man's ways.'" (p88) Are we not discussing bloodless genocide? This is a subject few books dare to discuss. Unfortunately nothing more is said about this demographic trend.

ANM: "We had become so proudly tolerant that we would feel 'guilty' if African or Arab immigrants were told that you do not mutilate your little girls in America!" (p176) Why should we expect people to become something they are not, just because they arrive here? It is as difficult for them to give up their customs, as it would be for us to move there and adopt theirs. The discussion should not be how to fit square pegs into round holes, but how to develop policies that will encourage the square pegs to return to their homelands.

ANM: "(Wisconsin) is vulnerable to the undermining problem not of immigration (which they need and welcome), but of uncontrolled immigration..." (p246) Why does Wisconsin need immigrants? What great harm would come to Wisconsin if they didn't have aliens streaming in? What is this magic the aliens have that America so desperately needs and the rest of the world doesn't want?

Ms. Geyer reports on the Hmong from Southeast Asia who settled in Wausau, Wisconsin.

ANM: "It was the more recent group, not so socialized, not so assimilated, who began imposing their own culture on little, unsuspecting Wausau. Yes, Virginia, THERE IS A CRITICAL MASS. There is a moment, in social or political change, when power shifts irrevocably to the side that has been gaining."

ANM: "And by the time the elite intellectual and political group realizes the danger, it really IS too late. The ties that have held the society together have been ineluctably rent; worse, rent by its own hand." (p49)

ANM: "The people of Wausau are not racists, nativists, restrictionists, exclusionists, or America-Firsters--indeed, they are just the opposite! But they had assumed that the newcomers were coming to be PART OF THEM, and not to transform them. Indeed, under what possible principle of personal morality or national interest must longtime Wausau residents acquiesce in the destruction of the life and the community that they have built up--and by people to whom they have no special responsibility, people who have made no commitment to this land?" (p275,276)

A key question for her book: "Who belongs, and in what numbers?" Ms. Geyer appears to imply that the Hmong, in large numbers, do not belong in Wausau or the U.S., but she does not come out and say so explicitly. No where in the book does she exclude anyone on the planet specifically.

The issue of what should be the ethnic composition of America is not addressed. A common ethnic descent is what binds a nation together for the long haul. Multi-national states are short term affairs lacking in true commitment.

Despite my few criticisms, I believe Georgie Ann Geyer has made an enormous contribution to the cause of patriotism. She has stood, almost alone, against the gale force of an intolerant orthodoxy, and should receive a special honor from a grateful nation. "Americans No More" is a milestone for a society that is in more trouble than it knows.