Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World - Hardcover

Purdy asks how modern lives he sees America (the US) as the paragon produce both liberty and violence, what the proportion of freedom to exploitation is in the economy, which political realms encourage people to feel control over their choices and which incite popular passions to flirt with chaos or dictatorship, and which inflections of a culture help its members live with dignity and which erode it. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

lication of his first book, For Common Things, Jedediah Purdy “stormed the capital . . . with an unfashionably passionate attack on the dangers of modern passionlessness” and established himself as a social critic “eloquent beyond his years” (Time). In his new book, Being America, Purdy applies his “fresh and vibrant voice” (Kirkus Reviews) to exploring how America is perceived, emulated, and judged in a rapidly changing world.

His journeys in Asia, Africa, and around the States illuminate the impact that America’s foreign policy and consumer culture leave on ordinary people. Purdy meets Westernized Egyptian party girls who consider Osama bin Laden a hero; an environmental activist in Indonesia whose models are McKinsey consultants and Afghan Jihadis; a Hindu nationalist in India who calls America a corrupt cultural wasteland, and then tells him, wistfully, “The world is waiting to become