Discoveries

“Foreigners aren’t always right about America, far from it. But neither are they merely embittered fanatics, or jealous of our money, or resentful of our power, or animated by any of the other stock explanations mainstream American pundits and politicians have advanced as substitutes for honest self-examination.” Honest self-examination is what Mark Hertsgaard, a freelance journalist and author, sets out to accomplish in “The Eagle’s Shadow,” a thoughtful book based on his travels, conversations, interviews and eavesdropping around the world.

Hertsgaard explores 10 impressions of America. Four are positive: America is the future, for example; America is the land of freedom. Six are negative: America is parochial and self-centered; Americans are philistines, to name two.

Hertsgaard is young enough to believe that we can change -- that we must change -- by understanding how we are perceived and by not being so threatened by criticism. “We need a revolution in America,” he writes toward the end. “Not one of violence and disorder, but one of values and ways of thinking, one that remembers where we came from.”

In spite of this statement, blurted like a confession, Hertsgaard has a light hand with political analysis that is extremely refreshing. He doesn’t pretend to be authoritative, like so many news analysts, about cultures he knows little about, and he doesn’t need to tell us that he “loves America.” He wouldn’t have written the book if he didn’t.

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War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War on Iraq

Milan Rai, Verso: 240 pp., $15 paper

“War Plan Iraq” is one of those books you read to explore in greater depth events that dominate the front pages of newspapers around the world. You go into it knowing that a balanced perspective is not what you paid for. Instead, it is a thorough explanation of one side of the argument, in this case based a bit too much on newspaper articles but useful nonetheless for its framework. Milan Rai is a founding member of a British antiwar organization called ARROW (Active Resistance to the Roots of War) and Voices in the Wilderness, an organization campaigning to end the United Nations-imposed economic sanctions on Iraq.

Illustrated with photos of Iraqi children and woodcuts of Iraqi life, “War Plan Iraq” is organized around 10 reasons not to go to war. They are: lack of evidence; lack of links between Iraq and Sept. 11; “this is not a war for democracy”; the possibility of humanitarian disaster; possible demolition of Iraqi Kurdistan; illegality; opposition from Iraq’s neighbors; “generals on both sides of the Atlantic oppose the war”; “a majority of people in Britain oppose the war”; and “a war on Iraq could trigger a world recession.”

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Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century, Catherine Lutz, Beacon Press: 328 pp., $20 paper

“How did it come to be that we live in a society made by war and preparations for war?” asks urban anthropologist Catherine Lutz in her fascinating study of Fayetteville, N.C., population 100,000 (one-quarter of them veterans), home of Ft. Bragg. We often hear about the positive economic effects of war preparations (a fact Lutz disputes) but very little about the cultural and social effects.

Fayetteville has the smallest tax base, the lowest voter registration and the highest poverty, child abuse, auto accidents and female unemployment per capita in North Carolina. Chain link fences, drugs, prostitution, segregation and the Klan make it an increasingly unpopular town for businesses and homeowners alike.

The line between military and civilian in this country is not as sharp as we’d like to believe, Lutz argues. “What would America look like today if the elites who opt for war had made other choices?”