"What does the world admire most about America? Science, technology, higher education, consumer goods--but not, it seems, freedom and democracy. Indeed, these ideals are in global retreat, for reasons ranging from ill-conceived foreign policy to the financial crisis and the sophisticated propaganda of modern authoritarians. Another reason, explored for the first time in this pathbreaking book, is the distorted picture of freedom and democracy found...

America's leading nonpartisan pollster shows just how different Americans are from everyone else and how our attitudes feed the rise in anti-Americanism.

Her long stay in Istanbul (she's still there) gives her an outsider's vantage on myopic American arrogance that is bracing." -Ann Hulbert, The Atlantic 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...