From Publishers Weekly
It's as old as the country itself, argue Barry Rubin, editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs, and journalist Colp Rubin, whose last joint book project for Oxford was Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography. Their nine-chapter chronological tour of the U.S. as hated republic can sometimes feel like little more than a compendium of quotations with filler descriptions—and IDs like "the kindly British novelist Charles Dickens, least snobbish of his nation and defender of the downtrodden in his great novels." But the figures they choose as hostile observers of America and Americans, and the things those observers say, make for a multifaceted national portrait. To take just one example, 19th-century British historian Thomas Carlyle asks a correspondent, "Could you banish yourself from all that is interesting to your mind, forget history, the glorious institutions, the novel principles of old Scotland that you might eat a better dinner, perhaps?" The book starts to feel especially speedy as it tries to represent the 20th and 21st centuries: Islamist Sayyid Qutb; the Eisenhower-era U.S. Information Agency director, George Allen; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Baader-Meinhof; Foucault; "a left-wing British journalist"; and Arthur Koestler all make cameos. Long on sound bites and short on in-depth analysis, this book provides entertaining glimpses of a nation that may have invented public relations to combat its own image problem. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The current animus directed at the U.S. as imperialist power and capitalist world dominator is nothing new. The Rubins, one a researcher of international affairs and the other an independent journalist, insightfully recount the long and troubled history of animosity directed at the U.S. They identify five stages in the evolution of anti-Americanism. In the eighteenth century, the American territory was considered wild and barbaric. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, the American experiment in social equality was seen as a failed society. With its growing strength and presence at the end of the nineteenth century leading up to World War II, U.S. democracy was feared as a threat to less democratic nations. From the end of WWII through the end of the cold war, criticism of the U.S. shifted from its potential to its actual domination in world affairs. The latest stage, notwithstanding the sympathy generated by the 9/11 attacks, encompasses a visceral reaction to American assertion of its politics, economics, and culture at the expense of the development of other nations. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
In the early twenty-first century, the world has been seized by one of the most intense periods of anti-Americanism in history. Reviled as an imperialist power, an exporter of destructive capitalism, an arrogant crusader against Islam, and a rapacious over-consumer casually destroying the planet, it seems that the United States of America has rarely been less esteemed in the eyes of the world. In such an environment, one can easily overlook the fact that people from other countries have, in fact, been hating America for centuries. Going back to the day of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, Americans have long been on the defensive. Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin here draw on sources from a wide range of countries to track the entire trajectory of anti-Americanism. Most significantly, they identify how anti-Americanism evolved over time. In the 18th century, the newfound land was considered too wild and barbaric to support human society. No one, the argument went, could actually live there. Animals brought from Europe, one French commentator claimed, shrunk in size and power. Native Americans too were "small and feeble," lacking "body hair, beard and ardor for his female." The very land itself was "permeated with moist and poisonous vapors, unable to give proper nourishment except to snakes and insects." This opinion prevailed through most of the 19th century, with Keats even invoking the lack of nightingales as symptomatic of just how unlovely and unlivable a place this America was. As the young nation came together at the beginning of the twentieth century and could no longer be easily dismissed as a failure, its very success became cause for suspicion. The American model of populist democracy, the rise of mass culture, the spread of industrialization-all confirmed that America was now a viral threat that could destabilize the established order in Europe. After the paroxysm of World War II, the worst fears of anti-Americanists were realized as the United States became one of the two most powerful nations in the world. Then, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, America became the sole superpower it is today, and the object of global suspicion and scorn. With this powerful work, the Rubins trace the paradox that is America, a country that is both the most reviled and most envied land on earth. In the end, they demonstrate, anti-Americanism has often been a visceral response to the very idea-as well as both the ideals and policies--of America itself, its aggressive innovation, its self-confidence, and the challenge it poses to alternative ideologies.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the early 21st century, the world has been seized by one of the most intense periods of anti-Americanism in history. Reviled as an imperialist power, an exporter of destructive capitalism, an arrogant crusader against Islam, and a rapacious over-consumer casually destroying the planet, the United States of America, it seems, has rarely been less esteemed in the eyes of the world. In such an environment, one can easily overlook the fact that people from other countries have, in fact, been hating America for centuries. Going back to the day of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, Americans have long been on the defensive.

Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin here draw on sources from a wide range of countries to track the entire trajectory of anti-Americanism. Most significantly, they identify how anti-Americanism evolved over time. In the 18th century, the newfound land was considered too wild and barbaric to support human society. No one, the argument went, could actually live there. Animals brought from Europe, one French commentator claimed, shrank in size and power. The Native American man too was "small and feeble," lacking "body hair, beard and ardor for his female." The very land itself was "permeated with moist and poisonous vapors, unable to give proper nourishment except to snakes and insects." This opinion prevailed through most of the 19th century, with Keats even invoking the lack of nightingales as symptomatic of just how unlovely and unlivable a place this America was.

As the nation came together at the beginning of the twentieth century and could no longer be easily dismissed as a failure, its very success became cause for suspicion. The American model of populist democracy, the rise of mass culture, the spread of industrialization -- all confirmed that America was now a vital threat that could destabilize the established order in Europe. After the paroxysm of World War II, the worst fears of anti-Americanists were realized as the United States became one of the two most powerful nations in the world. Then, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, America became the sole superpower it is today and the object of global suspicion and scorn. With this powerful work, the Rubins trace the paradox that is America, a country that is both the most reviled and most envied land on Earth. In the end, they demonstrate, anti-Americanism has often been a visceral response to the very idea -- as well as both the ideals and policies -- of America itself, its aggressive innovation, its self-confidence, and the challenge it poses to alternative ideologies.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly