Just Like Us The American Struggle to Understand Foreigners by Thomas Borstelmann

This book Just Like Us The Am

erican Struggle to Understand Foreigners by Thomas Borstelmann by Columbia University Press immediately captured my attention. Intriguing, this one is the reconstruction of the birth of the USA and its following steps for affirming without any doubt the model of a State, a Nation in the entire world; this, thanks to the strong American values perpetuated during the centuries; very ethical ones.

Every American you will meet along the way, he could be a fresh immigrant or a citizen of the USA from several generations once you will enter in confidence with you, at a certain point will tell you: "I am American!" and this phrase, if, at first will surprise you, say a lot about the strong identity felt by the American citizens.

So, being a model, Americans see with curiosity, sometimes skepticism people of other countries. Their model has been exported in most countries, so other countries and folks should learn by them.

The author then traces a reconstruction of the history of the USA and why we are at this point.

At first it was a colony, a ship of Pilgrims; in 1621 reached  the East Coast. Protestants, they colonized the place with their strong ethicity; at first the USA was a Protestant place, but later the arrival of people from other very diversified places posed a lot of questions. Black, Italians, Irish, Jewish, Russians, Hispanic all seen with great skepticism slowly slowly started to be appreciated and five kind of groups were introduced for classifying the large population of the USA. 

Italian Food entered prepotently in the collective imaginery of everyone as one of the best and healthy one of the world; Germans contributed largely at the expansion of the American cuisine as we know that.

Although with the time Jewish became million superating the number of people who raise in Israel and marriages with catholic or protestants became the 50% in the country, at long the USA has thought with a British touch, considering itself originally a british rib.

That's why at first UK's trips were, for the wealthiest classes reasons of priviledge, like studying in UK, or living in UK.

Of course, time, people, diversification meant a different change of perspective. 

Immigration was always very welcomed but there were bans in the remote past, for example, in 1880 there was the ban at chinese immigration; I found extremely interesting also the approach of the USA during rhe First and Second World War; Americans tried to convince common people with propaganda that they were fighting against Nazis and that there wasn't anything personal. In fact there is to say that after the war a lot of soldiers returned to the USA with german girls.

Living at the same time in the other part of the world no one of the Americans understood the abyss of the Nazi system and the final stermination of all Jewish and/or people with disabilities or problems.

So, it was after the end of the World War II that Americans read very differently all that mess, giving large space to all the survivors of the Holocaust and their witnesses in books, magazines, newsmagazines and these atrocities started to be known everywhere.

Dwight Ike Eisenhower maybe one of the best President of the USA in terms of inclusion of all individuals existing in the USA and the Planet (he also found People to People International) encouraged American's religious faith and instituted some prayers everyday to open  Cabinet meetings. Once they forgot to pray and once out Eisenhower told to the secretary: "Jesus Christ, we forgot the prayer!"

The horrible problems of the past, racism, anti-semitism sounded to be archieved by history; we all know that history repeat itself and we should repeat it often to ourselves but the period after the Second World War sounded great. Recently President Obama was elected as President and his main distinctive fact was that he has been the first black American President.

The era of the years of Barack Obama were happy, cheerful; apparently the world was going on well, although there was who started to plant the seed of hate; an hate that exploded once the President Trump, a populistic candidate at the Presidency, (as it happened in the entire world elections were won by populistic leaders), went in office.

A character completely different from the one of Barack Obama, it was not just a story of character, President Trump changed completely the immigration policy with a ban involving various countries, and policies in grade of permit to the anti-semitism, racism, xenofobia at home, etc to re-discover a new youthness.

Interesting book if you want to discover who Americans are, what they think of themselves and other people and countries, but also if you want a good, not too long book in grade of giving to you a fresh look and perspective of the intricated history and internal conflicts of a nation in grade to make the difference for the entire world.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori