Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required Reading!, September 10, 2003
Mark Hertsgaard is a journalist, an astute observor and communicator, and a very fine writer. Hertsgaard is also an American and his driver for gathering the information for this book appears to be a need to produce a 'wakeup call' for Americans. Well documented with conversations with people around the world, this book sets out to show how the people in the countries of the world relate to (and even mimic) Americans as people while finding our government, our consumerism, and our foreign policy (read empiricism) distasteful. Rather than driving this idea to a dulling end, Herstgaard manages to show how Americans can learn from the perceptions of people outside the USA, can examine the flaws present in abundance in our governmental control of the media, our "dumbing down" of our information about the rest of the world condition (social and environmental) by the corporate emesis of rampant consumerism and "fluff news" that flood not only our films but also our television, magazines and, sadly, our newspapers. He submits strong warnings of the sequelae of ignoring fundamental issues of human rights in our allowing the corporate homogenation of the world, depriving the growing lower class of jobs and much needed medical and monetary support. He writes about the embarassment of the 2000 presidential elections, the rush to war post 911, the frighteningly quick passage of the Patriot Act which dangerously impinges on human rights, and the growing negligence of the Global Warming Effect and other issues of Environmental significance.But while Hertsgaard is complete in his serious warnings about the current state of the American Mind, he does not look at the future with a hopeless eye. "The first challege for Americans is to do a better job of informing ourselves about what is going on around the world and our nation's role in it. This won't be easy, because the most readily available information comes from the media......If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them." He concludes his excellent book with a question: "Why can't America be wise as well as powerful, generous as well as rich, magnanimous as well as great? For all its flaws, this country remains a place where amazing things can happen." This book comes at a critical time for the United States. Yes, Hertsgaard has a soapbox presentation, but reading a man's commitment to the betterment of America should be required reading for our populace who would rather sit numbly in front of mindless TV 'reality' and game shows than carefully observe what is happening in the global situation. Americans are not presented as Bad Guys, just uninformed lazy minds who need to change priorities before it is too late.
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38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally,An HONEST Post 9/11 Look At America By An American, February 5, 2003
The Eagle's Shadow is a book that I would recommend to everyone no matter where they live on the planet. It is a well written look at the way we Americans are perceived by people who live outside the US. The book is very informative about how much American culture and policies affect everyone in the world. Hertsgaard has encountered people in very remote areas of the world who are quite knowledgable about American culture. American products reach every corner of the earth, thus, they affect everyone on earth. The book also explains how our policies on the environment, economics, and foreign affairs affect people throughout the world. As globalization becomes more and more prevalant, books like this one become more important in order for us to understand our role and how we affect others in this new society. We must understand our actions so that we may anticipate and change how the rest of the world reacts to us. Although it is clear from his writing that he is in support of the left wing, that does not mean this book is "left-wing propaganda." This book looks at the flaws of American foreign policies and our sometimes "cowboy mentality" when dealing with other countries and suggests some ways that we can change that and form better relationships with the rest of the world. However, it also looks at the wonderful freedoms, wealth, and potential that exists in America and how these can be gifts to the world if used responsibly.
I think some of the people who gave bad reviews may have missed the point of the way the book was written. The book was not supposed to be a bunch of interviews without any insight or reasoning to how these perceptions about the US formed. The author gave a few specific examples of ideas that many people in the world share regardless of their geographic location. The majority of the book was about the source of these views, both good and bad. Hertsgaard takes his interviews and applies the history and the current events that shape the ideas that are expressed by the people he spoke with. Also, I think the bad reviews illustrate the author's views that Americans are largely ignorant of things that happen outside of this country, and the policies that our goverment and corporations impliment both at home and abroad. It is very hard for someone to hear that they are ignorant in any way. This does not mean Americans are ignorant. It just means we tend to be ignorant about certain things. As illustrated in the book, this is not entirely our fault. Our media gives us a very one-sided view of the world and how it works. The vast majority of mainstream media is owned by a handful of corporations who are naturally going to give us news that benefits their profit margins and image. This is not some conspiracy idea or anything like that. For the past few years, I have almost exclusively watched BBC and ITN news (on PBS). The amount of unbiased information that I received from these sources far exceeds that of network news and even CNN. Two months ago, I got digital cable and EuroNews was one of the new channels I watch (it is like a European version of CNN). Although I do not know how it ranks with other news sources in Europe, I do know that it is the BEST television news source in the US right now. I hear ideas and events that are going on all over the world (and here in the US) that are either not mentioned or glossed over in American television news. I apologize for this rant, but I think it illustrates that we are not as knowledgable about history and current events as we should be. This has to change if we are going to enter the new globalized society that is forming right now. If not, we will be left behind.
After the 9/11 tragety, the majority of Americans felt that they had to agree with everything our government was doing. Anyone who disagreed was considered anti-American. While support to our leaders and society was needed and important, it was also important to voice honest ideas and opinions. When I think of America the first thing that comes to my mind is that I have freedoms that others don't have. The first of these is the freedom of speech. So, when people disagreed with Bush and the policies that the government wanted to implement, THEY were being the real patriots and were the most pro-American. To paraphrase Hertsgaard stated in his book, we cannot substitute a feeling of security for our rights.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Anti-Globalization Primer, January 4, 2003
THE EAGLE'S SHADOW ends with a list of problems facing the United States that neatly summarizes the main themes of Hertzgaard's thoughtful, if somewhat pro forma analysis of the new American imperium: "Our foreign policy is often arrogant and cruel and threatens to "blow back" against us in terrible ways. Our consumerist definition of prosperity is killing us, and perhaps the planet. Our democracy is an embarrassment to the word, a den of entrenched bureaucrats and legal bribery. Our media are a disgrace to the hallowed concept of freedom of the press. Our precious civil liberties are under siege, our economy is dividing us into rich and poor, our signature cultural activities are shopping and watching television. To top it off, our business and political elites are insisting that our model should also be the world's model, through the glories of corporate-led globalization."Hertzgaard goes on to say that the worst failure of all is our failure to admit these problems even exist. "How can we fix what we don't know is broken? How can we have an honest discussion about our foreign policy when we don't even admit we are an empire? How can we solve our economic problems when we can't talk intelligently about capitalism or acknowledge that the market can produce bad results as well as good? How can we address any of these problems if we rely on the feel-good fantasies transmitted by our media system which serve only to distract us from what's important and confuse us about what's true?" This is not a scholarly book, it is journalism. Good journalism, but somewhat thin, and not very intellectually rigorous. As a journalist Hertzgaard has a knack for the telling quote, (one of my favorites is a quote of Reagan talking to reporters after returning from his first trip to South America: "You'd be surprised -- they're all individual countries down there." A more chilling quote is from the new chairman of the FCC under the latest Bush, Michael Powell: "The night after I was sworn in [as commissioner], I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come.") He also has considerable insight into cause and effect relationships that are lost on both globalization's scourges and prophets. He explains, for instance, how under the rubric of the free market, the rules of media ownership in the Reagan eras were altered to favor large media corporations. By allowing them to further agglomerate their holdings from seven to twelve media outlets, the media giants made the start-up capital needed to penetrate overseas markets. By flooding the world with "Baywatch" episodes (1 billion viewers worldwide per week), the US media uncomprehendingly lit fuses of fascination with and resentment of America across the world. He notes that more and more the question of "who will police the police" (and who will audit the auditors) has gone begging as both political parties have raced to service the demands of the business elite. Similarly, he notes that the media has so completely embraced the views of their owners that the coverage of political institutions is now conducted by insiders for insiders, the court and its courtiers. No wonder American's don't vote, he says, (114th lowest turnout worldwide among democracies in the last election). Since the media's coverage of "politics" is always about tactics, never questioning the underlying premises of an increasingly closed system whose both sides accepts the free market gospel as, well, gospel, there is no real news. Interestingly, he also blames narrow political discourse offered in the press upon the lack of a true party of the left. Because Democrats do not offer a leftist vision, and because the press only covers "viable" parties (which really means they must have big campaign chests because only those with money are deserving of coverage), there is no voice to counterbalance the depredations being practiced in Washington against those who don't have the money to pay for an audience with their representatives -- the lower and middle classes. He tries to give us the larger picture. He argues that the history of the United States and its foundational "city on the hill" discourse has had unintended and often disastrous consequences. Here's an example of his explanation of the paradoxical American character which is both millenarian and bourgeois: "Calvinism put an extra twist on American's pursuit of wealth, for it prescribed hard work for everyone and held that an unquestioning faith in God--rather than good works--was the only path to salvation. The possession of riches was a sign that God favored a given individual, just as a person's poverty signaled God's disapproval (and the person's unenviable prospects in the afterlife." While there's not a lot of truly original thinking here, Hertzgaard's cleanly and crisply tells the story of how America's exceptionalist policies and its unquestioned support of the business elite has created an empire that refuses to take responsibility for itself, and refuses to play by the rules it imposes on others. It is a valuable primer in the wake of the terrorist attacks as many Americans are asking what what their government and their corporations have been doing in their name. Fortunately, Hertzgaard points out, the rest of the world separates the American people from the policies of its government. But now, he suggests, it's up to the American people to impose their will on the United States government. He even has the temerity to suggest that buy applying our great wealth and ingenuity to the ameliorating the ravages of world poverty, we might have a better chance of winning the "war" against terrorism.
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