Although she wrote for The New York Times Magazine and won a fellowship to live abroad for two years, Suzy Hansen discovered that she knew nothing about the world when she left America. Notes on a Foreign Country is her record of shock upon encountering nations that have often been poorly used by American foreign policy, economic ideas and unreflective theories on the meaning of life. “Americans are surprised by the direct relationship between their country and foreign ones because we don’t acknowledge that America is an empire; it is impossible to understand a relationship if you are not aware you are in one,” she writes. Living in Turkey and listening closely to Greeks and Egyptians, among others, Hansen discovers that American-style “structural reforms” ruin more lives than they help; our nation’s academics, officials and news reporters are perennially blind-sighted even when well intentioned. Although the author is occasionally reductive in her take on history, Notes on a Foreign Country is an insightful and highly personal critique of American myopia.
