Customer Reviews

The Narcissism of Minor Differences: How America and Europe Are Alike

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Most politically-enagaged Americans already think they know about Europe; either it's a decadent and pusillanimous continent that should serve as a warning or a more civilized and socially-cohesive place that America should aspire to emulate. Baldwin challenges these lazy assumptions with a mountain of objective data that show America tends to fall within the European range in a host of quantifiable respects. While not denying that the United States is distinct in a number of ways, the author shows convincingly that the differences between the US and "Europe" is often less pronounced than the differences between individual European countries. Perhaps the most valuable implicit lesson in the book is that "Europe" as a concept is extremely nebulous and not particularly valuable for comparisons. Baldwin's book is a quick read and though I sometime found the statistics a bit dry, his constant resort to quantifiable data keeps the thrust of the argument from becoming too subjective. I wish he would follow up his work here with a more opinionated sequel, but perhaps that would detract from the modest, objective qualities of this book. A gem.

Americans = Mars, Europeans = Venus, right? Not according to the author of this book. Through a series of tart mini-essays and comments, Baldwin makes what is essentially a collection of bar graphs comparing various aspects of America and Western European countries interesting, fun, and thought-provoking to read. The upshot of his argument is that, in many ways, America falls within the European mainstream on a host of social, economic, and cultural issues; indeed, the differences between European nations (such as those between northern and southern Europe) are often more pronounced than the differences between America and Europe-in-general. He is intellectually honest enough to recognize that his thesis is likely to be as troubling to liberals who look to Scandinavia-style social welfare states as a secular "Mecca" as it is to conservatives who dismiss Western Europe as decadent and biologically exhausted. Of necessity, more subjective measurements of difference are not included, and I suspect that here is where more significant differences would be observed. (The recent World Cup puts me in mind of one: the frequent racist heckling of black and foreign soccer players in many European countries, which has thankfully been expunged from most American sporting events. How could the willingness to express such sentiments be "measured" without introducing bias?)

I would like to see a revised version of the book which includes the former Warsaw Pact nations. Many of these countries have taken a more "American" approach to economic development, tax policy, and so forth than the EU nations; will their influence "seep into" the Western European countries, or will the pressure to "conform" be too great?

Without a doubt, I believe that Americans have been obtuse for 200 years,
and Europeans have been obtuse for 2000 years...Anthony St. John

While the author makes a good point now and then, in general he has engaged in the worst form of cherry picking of facts and data to make his case. For example, he tries to argue that Americans are "wealthier" than Germans, the French and Europeans in general by relying on GDP per capita and average income as the sole measurements. But anyone who has spent any time in Europe knows that these countries have everything that Americans have and then some, in terms of quality of life and material things. Beyond the material things, everyone has health care, and its better quality than in the US (in France and other countries, doctors still do house calls!). Europeans also have more generous retirement pensions, paid parental leave (after the birth of child), paid sick leave, much lower cost university education, way more vacations and holidays, etc. THAT'S part of how they measure quality of life and wealth. Baldwin's use of "GDP per capita" and "average income" data tell you nothing about distribution of income, i.e. if one person has $99 and another person has $1 their "average income" is $50 -- yet one of these people has 99 times the income of the other.

This is just one example out of many. Unfortunately Baldwin seems more intent on being a contrarian and upsetting the apple cart of conventional wisdom than actually shedding some light on the truth of the matter. And to accomplish his goal he has engaged in the worst sort of cherry picking of facts and data.

For a more balanced discussion of differences between the US and Europe I highly recommend Steven Hill's excellent "Europe's Promise" ([...]).