What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order.

Andrew is a publishing professional based in Toronto, Ontario.

Ronald Wright’s critique of the United States in What is America? traces American history from the landing of Columbus in 1492 to the present-day War on Terror. A large portion of the book is merely a summary of one of his other books, Stolen Continents, which documents how European settlers conquered the Western Hemisphere between the 15th and the 19th centuries. But Wright goes further in What Is America?, arguing that this “frontier mindset” was never outgrown by American culture, and attempts to convince his readers that America has always been (and continues to be) expansionist by nature.

Wright’s evidence for this theory is the long string of wars fought by America, including its treatment of Native Americans, its bloody Civil War, the Communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s, and a whole host of others, including the current War on Terror (where he suggests that American Christian fundamentalists are “not vastly different” from the Taliban or Al-Qaeda). Unfortunately, Wright ignores the fact that these conflicts all presented truly existential threats to America, and thus were justifiable: the secessionist South threatened to break up the Union; the rebel Indian tribes threatened transportation routes, and the Socialist totalitarianism and expansionist aims of the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes threatened liberty worldwide, as do the current extremist Muslim groups currently seeking power and influence around the globe.

Moreover, Wright manages to give America’s enemies a pass on their own crimes against humanity. He whitewashes the Soviet dictatorship over Russia (and the expansion of its tyrannical ideology over other countries), denies the importance of ending Saddam Hussein’s tyranny over Iraq, and even downplays the significance of the September 11 attacks and the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, referring to it as “an overreaction to a terrorist assault.” Wright also contradicts himself when he condemns the American people as both “provincial” and “colonial,” arguing that Americans are rarely concerned with the affairs of other nations, while elsewhere condemning them for trying to impose their will on other nations.

The main problem, in my view, is that What Is America? does not provide any insights for those who already have a negative view of Americans and their history, and provides a slanted view of the United States for those who don’t know the country’s history. Thus, Mr. Wright’s book appears, because of its lack of in-depth or impartial analysis, to have one goal in mind: to pander to and foster anti-American sentiment. Not recommended.