Being America
Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Having risen to national attention with his first book, For Common Things, Jedediah Purdy now cements his claim to being one of the most arresting public intellectuals of his generation. In Being America, Purdy turns his erudition and unique perspective to America’s relationship with a world that both admires and hates it.
Purdy has absorbed insights from people around the world: Westernized Egyptians who consider Osama bin Laden a hero, an urbane Indian who espouses gay rights and the most thuggish kind of Hindu nationalism, Cambodian sweat-shop workers, and others. Out of these conversations—and his inspired readings of political thinkers from Edmund Burke to James Madison—Purdy breathes new meaning into the American values of democracy, liberty, and free trade. Clear-thinking and far-sighted, Being America encourages America to strive to realize the potential it doesn’t always know it has.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 28-year-old lawyer has taken the first step in fulfilling the agenda set out in his widely noted first book, 1999's For Common Things: using earnest dialogue to remedy America's political and cultural ennui. In the months following September 11, Purdy set off on a trip through Egypt, India, Indonesia and China to assess perceptions of America abroad. He found most people divided in their feelings, often simultaneously admiring bin Laden and longing to emigrate to America. Self-consciously brainy, Purdy is preoccupied with initiating dialogue and does not shy away from discussing big issues AIDS, globalization, environmentalism, nationalism, refugees, empire, freedom which he often links to political and cultural movements of the past. He's also keen to assess the usefulness of icons on both the political right and left, and of capitalism itself, including groups such as the Mexican Zapatistas, Rainforest Action Network and the International Monetary Fund. For someone young, yet who thinks so hard about so many befuddling issues, he comes across as wonderfully sane: the writing is unadorned, lucid and without cynicism. This new book is a worthy companion, and in some ways counterpoint, to the more world-weary work of Thomas Friedman. Purdy is already among the most inspiring political thinkers writing today, and his ideas resonate like the clear ring of a bell through the cacophony of better-known pundits.
