- Paperback: 200 pages
- Publisher: Verso Press USA; New edition edition (Dec 1 1988)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0860919781
- ISBN-13: 978-0860919780
- Product Dimensions: 2 x 2 x 0.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #348,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
From Library Journal
Like de Tocqueville before him, Baudrillard, a French social scientist, is in search of the American ethos. His little essay, however, lacks the substance, perspicacity, and originality of a Democracy in America . Rather, Baudrillard's analysis tends to be grandiloquent and sometimes hackneyed, as when he observes "Americans believe in facts, but not in facticity , " and "The cinema and TV are America's reality!" In addition, the book is overpriced. Not recommended. Kenneth F. Kister, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Since de Toqueville, French thinkers have been fascinated with America. But when it comes to mysterious paradoxes and lyrical complexity no French intellectual matches Jean Baudrillard in contemplating the New World... [He] has become a sharp-shooting Lone Ranger of the post-Marxist left." -- New York Times "The collection of wild, often hilarious postcards from his trip to America contains some of the year's most orignal and beautiful writing." -- New Statesman and Society " ... occasionally provocative and almost always infuriating ... America is filled with perceptive, almost poetic observations." -- Rolling Stone "A mixture of crazy notions and dead-on insights, America is a valuable (and voluable) picture of what Mr. Baudrillard calls 'the only remaining primitive society' -- ours." -- New York Times Book Review
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
falling apart,
By
This review is from: America (Paperback)
Maybe I should have expected it considering the price, but the book started to fall apart as soon as I opened it. Every page I turn causes that page to come out of its binding. I had been warned about the highlighting, which doesn't bother me, but I did not expect to have an entire book of loose pages.
4.0 out of 5 stars
French impressionists insightful reflections of America,
By
This review is from: America (Paperback)
Here you can read a modern French philosopher's impressions of America. The author writes poetically and impressionistically about his visits to California and New York and points in between. He is simultaneously impressed, charmed, confounded, curious, and intrigued by this big country and its people, in contrast to Europe and Europeans. This is not so much a travelogue, but rather a gentle and thoughtful dissection of American culture, done in drive-by fashion, taking in the architecture, billboards, men and women on the sidewalks, the corner stop-and-shops, the geography, the highways, deserts, even the skies. This is not a book putting down America, as one might eroneously assume, but neither is it a pat-on-the-back. For American readers, it will serve as a mirror that reflects striking realities, both flattering and not, that, nevertheless, have become so common to us Americans that they are practically invisible to us, if not for the insightful light shined by this urbane French writer. Think of this book as a French impressionistic painting of America,--more in the "people-caught-in-the-act" style of Manet, rather than Monet with his lillies and haystacks--where the mundane, the ugly, the beautiful and the grandiose blend into a composition of insight, harmony and even-handed judgement of the particulars.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful prose,
By Jaime Azcarraga (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: America (Paperback)
I've been waiting a long time to read a piece of non-fiction that is as beautifully written as this book is. It is as if Baudrillard traveled to the future, read the first great 21st Century novel and retold the story except that he completely forgot the narrative, and left us with only the protagonist's thoughts. Sure he missteps a couple of times and you're left with the impression by the end of certain paragraphs that instead of offering the reader a real observation Baudrillard has merely circumnavigated the semblance of one, but where else have you read a thinker as ambitious as to try to convey in such an intimate manner a critique of a culture that doesn't relate to each individual directly as much as it exchanges symbols of communication. I give this book 4 stars as a first time read due to some of its thornier prose, but I'm sure that as the reader returns to this book he or she will become convinced that it is truly a 5 star achievment.
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