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    Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World
    Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World
    Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World
    Audiobook10 hours

    Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

    Written by Suzy Hansen

    Narrated by Kirsten Potter

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.

    Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naïve sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country-and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateAug 15, 2017
    ISBN9781681686851

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    Reviews for Notes on a Foreign Country

    4/5

    49 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Having lived in London, England from 4/2001-4/2005, in a post-America world after 9/11, this author has beautifully articulated an American perspective living abroad. At the same time, she outlines how America’s corrupting influence, particularly in the Arab world, has led us to where we are today. This book was mandatory for all high school students to read so they can better understand our position in the world, and how the international relations came to be. I never write reviews, but this book is a must-read for Americans who truly aren’t afraid to learn how our foreign policy/relations, as well as domestic policies, are conducted so they can truly begin to hold their government accountable.
    • 5/5
      Expansive and specific, readable with flourishes of startling beauty and insight, an honest investigation of Turkey, Greece, the Arab world, and of being an American.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good. She goes from an American writer who knows nothing to a complete anti-AMERICAN.The reason that this book rates so high is that I have been to Turkey six or seven times since 1986.My friends there are white Turks -she a classmate of my wife (Swarthmore '66) who recently moved to Ankarafrom Istanbul -( too crowded) and was a head of the AP for many years, and he a retired pipeline engineer.They both believe the CIA is responsible for everything that goes wrong in turkey, while we believe that tneCIA are pedigreed idiots.. what does our brave reporter think we should have done when saddam invaded kuwait
    • 5/5
      An impressive and thought-provoking book by a young journalist who finds that her carefree decision to head for Turkey as a way to understand the Muslim world via the most "Westernized" (and thus acceptable) Muslim nation in the Middle East leads her in some very unexpected directions -- including questioning her own identity. Which is the "foreign country" in the title of this book? It's hard to tell: Hansen tells the reader plenty about Turkey and its complex history (and the history of its relationship with the US) as well as about Egypt, but her long sojurn overseas causes her to look back on the US itself in much the same way that non-Americans might do -- as if it, to her, weren't her homeland but indeed just another foreign country. Hansen is challenging our assumptions about how we think about, discuss, report on, analyze and judge what happens abroad through our own prism, and reminding us that we necessarily have our own biases that come into play in this process. Sometimes, there are questions she fails to ask or address, as when she deplores LBJ's insensitivity to both Greek and Turkish political leaders when he was trying to avert a war over Cyprus (the still-divided island off the coast of Turkey with a substantial Greek population.) LBJ's decision was straightforward: fight, and I'll yank your funding, and Greek democracy (and Turkish independent rule) will have to rely on its own resources. Hansen is scathing about this arrogance -- but however tactless the approach, would she have preferred a war, so that the Greeks and Turks could maintain their national pride and honor and not be disrespected? Or ... a third way? She doesn't extend her analysis that far. Equally, she deplores the US-supported torture of the shah's SAVAK secret police in Iran -- but fails to mention that today's Iranian regime appears to be just as adept at torture and repression, without the aid of the US, even though it also has built regional medical centers that meet the healthcare needs of its citizens better than we can do here. That's a problem that Iranians themselves protest about, as we saw during the "Green" elections. Finally, Hansen clearly believes that Americans don't understand their world, and that may indeed be true for a large portion of the population. Why? How do we alter that? (And why is it that some Americans have no problem identifying Mossadegh when asked?) We can afford to be incurious -- that's her point -- but why is it that some people do investigate the world, travel, and become knowledgeable, while others (like Hansen, it seems) have this knowledge and questioning forced upon them? So, this is a merit-worthy look at what's wrong with Americans and their myopia, but she tips a bit too far sometimes in the direction of patting herself on the back for being "woke'. At some point, it's an individual responsibility to learn, and simply deploring the state of affairs isn't enough. This is a fundamental weakness in what otherwise is a provocative and interesting book.Those who are well-informed about the region (Egypt, Turkey, Greece, etc.) will find very little that's new, beyond Hansen's personal explorations, discoveries and anecdotes. That doesn't mean this isn't worth reading, as she does have a keen eye for the interesting and quirky as well as for the telling detail. The underlying thesis was provocative enough to warrant a five-star rating, but the book itself gets only 4.3 stars, given the aforementioned shortcomings.
    • 4/5
      This is an important book but from my perspective it is flawed by several things, especially the omission of reference to any of the efforts by US journalists, academics and others to awaken the public, as Hansen was awakened by living and reporting on Turkey. Although she cites many authors to excellent effect, she seems unaware of the work Chalmers Johnson, Andrew Bacevich, or Lederer and Burdick's "The Ugly American." All of these people and others addressed her theme of American ignorance of the nations we try to shape in our image. Similarly, Hansen also ignores the steady stream of domestic dissidence with the worldview and foreign policies she rightly finds offensive, from Vietnam through to the present day. Perhaps understandably, someone who has loved in Turkey since 2007 is unaware of the work of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and other organizations and individuals trying to alert Americans to the deeds done in our name. Come to think of it, in the run up to the second Iraq War, an organization was born to oppose invasion of Iraq that called itself "Not In Our Name". Despite those omissions, Hansen's book is useful for two reasons: it is a worthy effort to wake up the American public about what is being done in our name abroad and how it affects both Americans and non-Americans and it gave this baby boomer, who has in a small way been trying to communicate about these same situations for several decades, insight into the worldview and mindset of people born in the 80s and 90s.
    • 5/5
      Wow, this is one of the best books on American foreign policy I have ever had the chance to read. Hansen's perspective is most certainly shaped by her years living abroad in Turkey and living within a more moderate Islamic society. I think my favourite chapter is her thoughts on the poorer areas of Mississippi as compared to Turkey. Outstanding. This might very well be my favourite book of 2017.
    • 1/5
      A meditation on American identity. Based on print reviews, I thought I would find this book interesting, but, instead, found it a poorly composed book. Portions of the book were previously published in a number of magazines and it appears little editing was done while combining these articles into a book. Several "amusing anecdotes" were repeated. I imagine it would have been a more understandable read if the articles were published as such with appropriate chapter headings. Why would a person who states "the impact of seeing foreign things with my own eyes was the equivalent of reading a thousand history books" think they even needed to write a book? Or, better yet, why would one read a book based on personal anecdotes where the author exclaims "in my ten years abroad, I wonder how often it was that anyone told White Americans the truth?"?