From Cercles, a special issue on Defining Americanization, including Olivier Richomme (Lyon): The role of “ethno-racial” classification in the Americanization process; Bruce Plourde (Temple): Frontier as Symptom: Captain Kirk, Ahab, and the American Condition; John D. Schwetman (Minnesota-Duluth): The American Cosmopolitan: Deracination in the Works of Jack Kerouac and Toni Morrison; and J. A. Zumoff (CUNY): The Americanization of the American Communist Party in the Early 1920s. Thomas Meany revisits George Santayana's ambivalent thoughts about his prosperous adopted home — America. Dwight McDonald's Against the American Grain, against the odds, still has something to say. Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism offered an indictment of American life that displeased both the right and the left. Here's a day in America according to a (baffled) foreigner. From National Review, an exceptional debate: Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru on the Obama administration’s assault on American identity (and a response and a reply). Real America: Abe Sauer on the gunmen among us. Why are some Americans becoming violent shoppers? Stefany Anne Golberg on America's eclectic ways of mourning the dead. Let there be no mistake, the old world of America is over. From Scott Brown's populist bait-and-switch to Harvey Weinstein's "indie" push for an Inglourious Basterds Oscar, we have become a polarized nation of desperate believers. Americans just aren’t equipped for the 21st century. Joe Biden is right to insist that America has little in common with Rome or Britain before their empires collapsed. Joel Kotkin on America's dubious decline (and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more on The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050).
