Customer Reviews

Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought

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This book is about the intellectual roots of anti-american sentiment. It traces anti-americanism back to 18th century France where Buffon, a famous biologist, developed a theory about the degeneracy of animals and plants in the New World. Although Franklin and Jefferson reacted against Buffon thesis it was to have a brilliant future. James W. Ceaser shows how it morphed through two centuries of intellectual aberrations from having racial, economic to philosophical foundations. Central in his essay are figures like Heidegger and Baudrillard.

Ceaser eloquently captures the intellectual and political foundations of today's anti-america climate. Ceaser provides a clear, yet thorough genealogical analysis of this movement, and manages to spark occasional laughter while providing clever personal insight into the greatest intellectual debates of the 20th century, including the thought of Kojeve, Strauss, Heidegger, and Baudillard. This book has in it the spirit of Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind," Roger Kimball's "Tenured Radicals," and Peter Lawler's "Postmodernism Rightly Understood."

This book is not really worth reading. It's loaded with academic jargon, and it skips around a lot. It starts off well, but overall, the book is boring and hard to follow.