Notes on a foreign country : an American abroad in a post-American world

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Hansen, Suzy, 1977-

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

276 pages ; 24 cm.

General Note:

Includes index.

Summary:

"A revelatory reflection on America's role in the world from the perspective of a young woman who has been living in Istanbul for the past six years"--

Contents:

First time east: Turkey -- Finding Engin: Turkey -- A Cold War mind: America and the world -- Benevolent interventions: Greece and Turkey -- Money and military coups: the Arab world and Turkey -- Little Americas: Afghanistan, Palistan, and Turkey -- American dreams: America, Iran, and Turkey.

Subject Term:

Foreign correspondents -- United States -- Biography.

Publication Info:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Subject:

Foreign correspondents -- United States -- Biography.

United States -- Foreign public opinion, Turkish.

United States -- Relations -- Turkey.

Turkey -- Relations -- United States.

Hansen, Suzy, 1977- -- Travel.

Correspondents, Foreign

ABŞ

ABSh

Ameerika Ühendriigid

America (Republic)

Amerik

Америк

Amerika Birlăshmish Shtatlary

Amerika Birlăşmi Ştatları

Amerika Birlăşmiş Ştatları

Amerika ka Kelenyalen Jamanaw

Amerika Qūrama Shtattary

Amerika Qŭshma Shtatlari

Amerika Qushma Shtattary

Amerika (Republic)

Amerikai Egyesült Államok

Amerikanʹ Veĭtʹsėndi͡avks Shtattnė

Amerikări Pĕrleshu̇llĕ Shtatsem

Amerikas Forenede Stater

Amerikayi Miatsʻyal Nahangner

Ameriketako Estatu Batuak

Amerikiĭn Nėgdsėn Uls

Америкийн Нэгдсэн Улс

Amirika Carékat

ANU

АНУ

AQSh

Ar. ha-B.

Arhab

Artsot ha-Berit

Artzois Ha'bris

Bí-kok

Ē.P.A.

EE.UU.

Egyesült Államok

ĒPA

Estados Unidos

Estados Unidos da América do Norte

Estados Unidos de América

Estaos Xuníos

Estaos Xuníos d'América

Estatos Unitos

Estatos Unitos d'America

Estats Units d'Amèrica

États-Unis

Ètats-Unis d'Amèrica

États-Unis d'Amérique

Fareyniḳṭe Shṭaṭn

Feriene Steaten

Feriene Steaten fan Amearika

Forente stater

Hēnomenai Politeiai Amerikēs

Hēnōmenes Politeies tēs Amerikēs

Hiwsisayin Amerikayi Miatsʻeal Tērutʻiwnkʻ

Istadus Unidus

Jungtinės Amerikos valstybės

Mei guo

Mei-kuo

Meiguo

Mî-koet

Miatsʻyal Nahangner

Miguk

Na Stàitean Aonaichte

NSA

S.U.A.

SAD

Saharat ʻAmērikā

SASht

Severo-Amerikanskie Shtaty

Северо-Американские Штаты

Severo-Amerikanskie Soedinennye Shtaty

Северо-Американские Соединенные Штаты

Si͡evero-Amerikanskīe Soedinennye Shtaty

Сѣверо-Американскіе Соединенные Штаты

Sjedinjene Američke Države

Soedinennye Shtaty Ameriki

Соединенные Штаты Америки

Soedinennye Shtaty Severnoĭ Ameriki

Соединенные Штаты Северной Америки

Soedinennye Shtaty Si͡evernoĭ Ameriki

Соединенные Штаты Сѣверной Америки

Spojené obce severoamerické

Spojené staty americké

SShA

США

Stadoù-Unanet Amerika

Stáit Aontaithe Mheiriceá

Stany Zjednoczone

Stati Uniti

Stati Uniti d'America

Stâts Unîts

Stâts Unîts di Americhe

Steatyn Unnaneysit

Steatyn Unnaneysit America

SUA (Stati Uniti d'America)

Sŭedineni amerikanski shtati

Sŭedinenite shtati

Tetã peteĩ reko Amérikagua

U.S.

U.S.A.

United States of America

Unol Daleithiau

Unol Daleithiau America

Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Ameriko

USA

Usono

Vaeinigte Staatn

Vaeinigte Staatn vo Amerika

Vereinigte Staaten

Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika

Verenigde State van Amerika

Verenigde Staten

VSA

Wááshindoon Bikéyah Ałhidadiidzooígíí

Wilāyāt al-Muttaḥidah

Wilāyāt al-Muttaḥidah al-Amirīkīyah

Wilāyāt al-Muttaḥidah al-Amrīkīyah

Yhdysvallat

Yunaeted Stet

Yunaeted Stet blong Amerika

ZDA

ЗДА

Združene države Amerike

Zʹi͡ednani Derz͡havy Ameryky

Зьєднані Держави Америки

Zjadnośone staty Ameriki

Zluchanyi͡a Shtaty Ameryki

Zlucheni Derz͡havy

ZSA

Η.Π.Α.

Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Αμερικής

Америка (Republic)

Американь Вейтьсэндявкс Штаттнэ

Америкӑри Пӗрлешӳллӗ Штатсем

САЩ

Съединените щати

Злучаныя Штаты Амерыкі

ولايات المتحدة

ولايات المتّحدة الأمريكيّة

ولايات المتحدة الامريكية

미국

É.-U.

ÉU

United States -- Relations -- Foreign countries

Anatolia

Anatolie

Ānātūlī

Asia Minor

Asia Minore

Bu̇gd Naĭramdakh Turk Uls

Buturuki

Cộng hoà Thỏ̂ Nhĩ Kỳ

Dēmokratia tēs Tourkias

Devlet-i Aliye Osmaniye

Durka

Durkka dásseváldi

Gweriniaeth Twrci

Jamhuri ya Uturuki

Jamhuuriyada Turki

Jumhūrīyah al-Turkīyah

Komara Tirkiyeyê

Lýðveldið Turkaland

Lýðveldið Tyrkland

Orílẹ̀-èdè Olómìnira ilẹ̀ Túrkì

Osmanlı İmparatorluğu

Osmanskai͡a Imperii͡a

Ottoman Empire

Pobblaght ny Turkee

Poblacht na Tuirce

Repóbblica d'l Turchî

Repubbleche de Turchie

Repubblica di Turchia

Republic of Turkey

Republic of Türkiye

República da Turquia

Republica de Turchia

Republica de Turquía

Republica Turcia

Republiek Turkeye

Republiek Turkije

Republiek van Turkye

Republik bu Tirki

Republik Tierkei

Republik Turkäi

Republik Türkei

Républik Turki

Republik Turkia

Republika e Turqisë

Republika ng Turkiya

Repùblika Tërecczi

Republika Turcija

Republika Turcji

Republika Turcyje

Republika Turecko

Republika Turkiya

Republika Turkojska

Republika Turska

Republika Turt͡sii͡a

Republiḳah ha-Ṭurḳiyah

Republiken Turkiet

Republikken Tyrkia

Republikken Tyrkiet

République de Turquie

République turque

Repuvlika de Turkiya

Ripablik kya Buturuki

Ripoliku Turkiyakondre

T.C. (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti)

Tagduda n Tturk

Teki

Tëreckô

Ṭerḳay

Ṭerḳishe Republiḳ

Thekhi

Thỏ̂ Nhĩ Kỳ

Thú-ngí-khì

Tiakei

Tierkei

Tiki

Tirki

Tırkiya

Tirkiye

Ti͡urk

Ti͡urk Respublika

Ti͡urkii͡a

Ti͡urkii͡a Respublika

Tlacatlahtocayotl Turquia

Tʻŏkʻi

T'ŏk'i Konghwaguk

Tʼóok Bikéyah

Torkėjė

Tȯrkiă

Törkie

Törkieë

Tȯrkii͡a

Tȯrkii͡a Jȯmḣu̇rii͡ate

Török Köztársaság

Törökország

Toruko

Toruko Kyōwakoku

Tourkia

Tourkikē Dēmokratia

Tturk

Tu er qi gong he guo

Tū-ī-gì

Tū-ī-gì Gê̤ṳng-huò-guók

Tu'erqi

Tu'erqi gong he guo

Tu'erqi Gongheguo

Tuirc

Tunkī

Turchî

Turchia

Turchie

Turchy Respublikæ

Turcia

Turcija

Turcijas Republika

Turcja

Turcland

Turcyjo

Turechchyna

Turecká republika

Turecko

Tureke

Turet͡ska Respublika

Turėtskai͡a Rėspublika

Tureuki

Türgi

Türgi Vabariik

Türgü

Türgü Vabariik

Turk

Turkäi

Turkaland

Turkamastor

Türkän

Turkanʹ respubliksʹ

Turkee

Türkei

Turkeya

Turkeye

Turki

Turkia

Turkia Respubliko

Turkieë

Turkiet

Turkii

Tu̇rkii͡a

Tu̇rkii͡a Respublikasy

Tu̇rkiĭė

Tu̇rkiĭė Respublikata

Turkija

Turkije

Turkin tasavalta

Turkio

Turkiyā

Turkiya Republika

Türkiyä Respublikası

Turkiyah

Turkiyakondre

Türkiye

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti

Türkiýe Respublikasy

Turkki

Turkojska

Turkowska

Turkujo

Turkya

Turkyah

Turkye

Turqia

Turquía

Turquie (Repupblic)

Turska

Turtchie

Turt͡si

Turt͡si Respubliki

Turt͡siĭ

Turt͡sii͡a

Turtsyi͡a

Turukiya

Tuykia

Twrci

Tyrkia

Tyrkiet

Tyrkland

Tẏrt͡si

Uturuki

Vysokai͡a Porta

Whenua Korukoru

Τουρκική Δημοκρατία

Τουρκία

Δημοκρατία της Τουρκίας

Република Турска

Република Турция

Република Турција

Турска

Турцыя

Турци

Турци Республики

Турция

Турција

Турций

Турція

Турчы Республикæ

Турэцкая Рэспубліка

Турк

Туркань республиксь

Туркамастор

Турецька Республіка

Турецка Республіка

Турецкая Республика

Туреччина

Тюрк

Тюрк Республика

Тюркия

Тюркия Республика

רפובליקה הטורקית

תורכיה

טערקישע רעפובליק

טערקיי

טורקיה

تركيا

جمهورية التركية

トルコ

トルコ共和国

土耳其

土耳其共和國

터키

터키 공화국

SAILS ISBN:

9780374280048

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Holmes Public Library	070.92 HAN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Attleboro Public Library	920 HANSEN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dighton Public Library	070.92 HAN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Fairhaven-Millicent	B HANSEN (SUZ) HAN 2017	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	070.92 HANSEN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mansfield Public Library	070.92 HANSEN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mattapoisett Free Public Library	070.92 HAN 2017	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Pembroke Public Library	070.92 HAN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Plainville Public Library	92 HAN	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Taunton Public Library	327.730092 H249N	2ND FLOOR STACKS	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award * Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction

New York Times Book Review Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine and The Progressive

"A deeply honest and brave portrait of of an individual sensibility reckoning with her country's violent role in the world." -- Hisham Matar, The New York Times Book Review

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 and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.

Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naïve sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country--and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world. She came to understand that anti-Americanism is not a violent pathology. It is, Hansen writes, "a broken heart . . . A one-hundred-year-old relationship."

Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and deeply attuned to the voices of those she met on her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America's place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation--a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of grave national and global turmoil.

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

After moving to Turkey in 2007, American journalist Hansen, who writes for the New York Times Magazine, came to the startling realization that America seen from abroad is a wholly different entity from the America she knew. Hansen explores her own loss of innocence, as her belief in American grandiosity, exceptionalism, and humanitarianism is deeply shaken by the destruction wrought by the U.S. in the Middle East. The first chapters describe Hansen's encounters with Turkish nationalism and her painful acquaintance with a new view of her country's history. Subsequent chapters explore the ways American interventions have spread wars, propped up dictators, destroyed landscapes in the name of modernization, and spurred the rise of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Middle and Near East. Lucid, reflective, probing, and poetic, Hansen's book is also a searing critique of the ugly depths of American ignorance, made more dangerous because the declining U.S. imperial system coincides with decay at home. The book is a revelatory indictment of American policy both domestic and foreign, made gripping by Hansen's confident-if overreaching-distillation of complicated historical processes and her detailed, evocative descriptions of places, people, and experiences most American audiences can't imagine. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Americans are taught that they are exceptional, brave, and fearless. Hansen's must-read book makes the argument that Americans, specifically white Americans, are decades overdue in examining and accepting their country's imperial identity. In 2007, journalist Hansen won a fellowship to live abroad and chose Turkey because American author James Baldwin wrote he felt more like himself, a gay, black man living in the 1960s, in Istanbul than New York. How could that be? Hansen's argument goes beyond the factual assertion that Americans are ignorant of the country's long, complicated, invasive histories with many other countries around the world. She makes the paradigm-breaking claim that what Americans are taught about their national and personal identities disallows the very acquisition of this knowledge. When a mine collapses in the Turkish city Soma and she asks for the cause, she's stunned that people want to talk about American foreign policy from the 1950s. Only after years of living in Turkey can Hansen frame interview questions with an awareness of her American biases. Hansen builds her winning argument by combining personal examination and observation with geopolitical history lessons. She is a fearless patriot, and this is a book for the brave.--Dziuban, Emily Copyright 2017 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

NOTES ON A FOREIGN COUNTRY: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, by Suzy Hansen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $15.) Over her years living in Istanbul, Hansen, a journalist, became keenly aware of America's enduring influence in the Middle East - and, as she put it, Americans' "active denial of their empire even as they laid its foundations." This pointed memoir reconciles her personal idea of the United States with its political realities. THE SEVENTH FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE, by Laurent Binet. Translated by Sam Taylor. (Picador, $16.) This high-minded detective novel is a semiotic romp. Binet treats the death of the critic Roland Barthes as a possible murder with political undertones. Heaps of real-life figures crop up along the way, including Julia Kristeva, François Mitterrand and Michel Foucault. The sendups of academia are frequent and gleeful. THANKS, OBAMA: My Hopey, Changey White House Years, by David Litt. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $16.99.) Litt joined the Obama campaign as a volunteer, eventually rising to become a senior speechwriter for the president. This optimistic account centers on Litt's coming-of-age at the White House (in a job where "every audience is the entire United States"), and assesses the president's legacy along with the political processes that shaped it. BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD, by Attica Locke. (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $15.99.) In East Texas a ranger goes searching for the killer of a black man and white woman, whose bodies were fished out of a bayou. As he rushes to solve the crime, secrets, betrayals and racial tensions across generations threaten to erupt. Our columnist Marilyn Stasio listed the book as one of the best crime novels of 2017, and wrote, "Locke writes in a blues-infused idiom that lends a strain of melancholy and a sense of loss to her lyrical style." BUNK: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, by Kevin Young. (Graywolf, $18.) This timely history delves into America's enduring fascination with the apocryphal, touching on everything from P.T. Barnum to fabricated memoirs. Our reviewer, Jonathan Lethem, called the book "a panorama, a rumination and a polemic at once," which "delivers riches in return." THE UNDERGROUND RIVER, by Martha Conway. (Touchstone, $16.) In the 1800s, a young seamstress is abandoned by her sister, and is taken in by a traveling theater company based on a flatboat. Soon, she becomes involved in the dangerous work of ferrying children born into slavery across the Ohio River. This novel follows along as she evades slave catchers and other perils, and offers a host of quirky characters.

Kirkus Review

A journalist questions the notion of American exceptionalism.When New York Times Magazine contributing writer Hansen arrived in Turkey in 2007 on a research fellowship, she harbored a deep faith in America's "inherent goodness, as well as in my country's Western way of living, and perhaps in my own inherent, God-given, Christian-American goodness as well." She assumed that any nation's move toward modernity "in the American sense" meant progress. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, where international geography had been cut from the school curriculum, she knew little about the world; even as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, she hardly noticed international events. Living in a "zone of miraculous neutrality" about her country's role in foreign affairs, she naively and complacently believed America to have "uniquely benevolent intentions toward the peoples of the world." That view changed dramatically as she traveled through the Middle East, reading history and political analysis and conducting many interviews in Turkey, Afghanistan, Greece, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. She discovered that fear of "communism, Islamism, or any other enemyism of the United States" led America to foster military dictatorships rather than risk the outcomes of democratic elections. Talking with Egyptian dissidents and Muslim Brothers, for example, Hansen learned of the corruption, torture, and repression resulting from American efforts to undermine Egypt with the aim of gaining power in the Arab world. She concludes that keeping Americans unaware about global issues has served such efforts, unleashed hatred abroad, and contributed to the rise of Donald Trump. Examining her own identity as an observer and writer forms a recurring theme: was she endorsing America's penchant for denial if she wrote about a foreign country without fully understanding its history, including America's role? Hansen offers a heartfelt plea for empathy and a recognition of "the realities of millions of people," but honing a sophisticated global perspective seems far more complicated than she acknowledges here. A mostly illuminating literary debut that shows how Americans' ignorance about the world has made turmoil and terrorism possible. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

Journalist Hansen moved to Istanbul in 2007 after receiving a writing fellowship, an experience that challenges her conceptions of America and its role in the world. Despite her Ivy League education, she finds she knows little about international relations or Middle Eastern history. Always believing in America's unselfish goodness and exceptionalism, she is saddened and disillusioned to hear of the negative effects of U.S. empire-building after World War II. Through her interviews and extensive research, she learns that white privilege and Western-style modernization have contributed to government destabilization and the rise of the religious right in such nations as Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Having lived in Turkey for several years gives Hansen a unique perspective on the rise of Erdogan. A thorough, courageous, and thoughtful writer, Hansen probes her own prejudices in this coming-of-age memoir and urges Americans to become better informed about the world and try to see America from a broader perspective. VERDICT Though some readers will not appreciate Hansen's revelations, this important book should be read by all thinking Americans who wonder why so many around the world hate this country. ["A unique work that will find its place among a dedicated audience": LJ 6/15/17 review of the Farrar hc.]-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Introduction	p. 3
1 First Time Ease: Turkey	p. 29
2 Finding Engin: Turkey	p. 69
3 A Cold War Mind: America and the World	p. 108
4 Benevolent Interventions: Greece and Turkey	p. 132
5 Money and Military Coups: The Arab World and Turkey	p. 161
6 Little Americas: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey	p. 190
7 American Dreams: America, Iran, and Turkey	p. 215
Epilogue	p. 239
Notes	p. 249
Acknowledgements	p. 261
Index	p. 265

Available:

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

New York Review of Books Review

Kirkus Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents