America

This would pair well with Kissinger's On Diplomacy and Jameson's Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.Lucid, poetic, anticipatory. He mixes up the Sierras and the Rockies but other than that commits no real sins. Read this if you are confused as to why American culture seems gutted, kitsch, and meaningless. This is partly an exploration of America/Europe differences and partly a meditation on the coming of the postmodern.

I'll not make any opinion over Jean Baudrillard, But I think this book is a little bit more easy to approach comparing to L'échange symbolique et la mort, still very sharp and deep lecture, and I'm very pleased reading this book, I got it on hard cover, and the quality of paper is really nice, Is a very small book on a different format size, I totally love it!

I'm not much into the postmodernists like Baudrillard. I didn't care for his short book, Why Hasn't Everything Disappeared?, but I did find this book interesting. His best chapter is "Utopia Achieved."There are several critical comments I could make, especially if I bothered to do a second reading, but I'll just make this one, rather superficial criticism: Baudrillard, to me, makes too much of the desert as the centerpiece of his analysis and discussion. Frankly, not many of us, say, in the Northeast, Midwest, the South, think deeply of the desert when we think of America. Why not make New York City the focal point to discuss American culture (or lack thereof)? Why not Appalachia, or Florida, or Texas, the Mississippi River, the Great Plains, or the Rocky Mountains the source of metaphor and critique? Why not, surely, all of these, including California? The answer, I suppose, is that Europe, and especially France, lacks anything like America's western deserts, so part of the uniqueness of American culture, as Baudrillard explores it, must seize upon a desert metaphor. While Baudrillard rightly discusses California quite a bit, he still returns to the desert in the end. But the age of John Wayne movies and TV Westerns is long gone.

America of the ‘80 through the eyes of a French sociologist and philosopher

I once heard a psychologist say, "If you went underwater and asked a fish to describe its environment, the last thing it would list would be water." Baudrillard does the same thing with America: pointing out what is so obvious as to be hidden, secretive, over-transparent. As with all Baudrillard's books, the message is brilliantly insightful, poetic, and sharp as a razor. You'll never look at the USA in the same way. (And I'm American.)

Funny translation. Good insights.

though a bit out of date now this is a brilliant reflection on then new world occupants and their peculiarities. a valuable read and understanding.

I loved this book in college and look forward to reading it again. Frankly I think he is somewhat ridiculous, but thought provoking and hilarious. I had a girlfriend almost break up with me because she read the book literally and took affront of a French man critiquing the US.Anyhow, my criticism with this edition is that the original version was square in shape and full of nice color pictures. It didn't feel like just another staid french literary criticism book. It felt more like a travel guide-book (though a warped one). Obviously the text is the same as the original and you shouldn't judge a book by it cover, but in this case, layout and design I think make more than a subtle change in how the reader will approach the book.I just did some research. Apparently the original version is still on sale on Amazon. I heartily recommend you purchase this version: America

Il libro è arrivato nei tempi previsti. Il problema ë che si staccano le pagine mentre le leggo: sarà molto probabilmente un problema di rilegatura ma in questo modo la lettura non è per niente facile, oltretutto se mi trovo all’aperto le pagine volano e ne ho già perse alcune.

Baudrillard (RIP) is true to his philosophical roots, and takes no prisoners and pulls no punches. Some may have to try and forgive his rant about Modernism, but his keen observations and synthesis of recent history is breathtaking. Liberte', Egalite' Fraternite' ... a definite recommended read.

This is one of the more accessible books by Baudrillard, within which he takes the reader through a number of essays on America. I found the introduction (written by a scholar rather than by Baudrillard himself) to be overly complicated and inaccessible, which did the book itself no favours I'd suggest skipping and moving on to the main course.

Un excellent chemin pour se perdre et retrouver certaines saveurs des années 60. A lire à toute heure du jour et de la nuit, au-delà de l'espace et du temps...

Utterly superb and crystalline observations.Why any one or any nation feels affronted by observations is beyond my conception. Although the meta-narrative concept of Truth may have been abandoned, the postmodern notion of truth still exists and is no less valid. This text is a wonderfully balanced and clearly observed encounter with America at that point in history. it is not a definitive 'guide' or expose, because it was not supposed to be and besides such concreteness is pure illusion. So Baudrillard was French, so he cast his rapier vision Westwards? So what? It exists, get over it. Rather than offer any more comment I have chosen to offer instead, my favourite observations on the observations.“One could almost believe that the American Deserts were created precisely in order to satisfy the cloud-stifled yearnings of northern Europeans” (p. XI)“Clouds spoil our European skies. Compared with the immense skies of America and their thick clouds, our little fleecy skies and little fleecy clouds resemble our fleecy thoughts, which are never thoughts of wide open spaces.” (p.16)“Meaning is born out of the erosion of words, significations are born out of the erosion of signs” (p.4)“Whose immanence is breathtaking, yet lacking a past through which to reflect on this, and therefore fundamentally primitive ... It’s primitivism has passed into the hyperbolic, inhuman character of a universe that is beyond us, that far outstrips its own moral, social, or ecological rationale.” (p.8)“It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradict the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each others’ food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?)” (p.15)“The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide., suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it ... to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence.“ (p.21)“For me there is no truth of America. I ask of the Americans only that they be Americans. I do not ask them to be intelligent, sensible, original.” (p. 27)“One of the aspects of their good faith is this stubborn determination to reconstitute everything of a past and a history which were not their own and which they have largely destroyed or spirited away.” (p.42)“The paradox of this society is that you cannot even die in it anymore since you are already dead.” (p.44)“All you need to know about American society can be gleaned from an anthropology of its driving behaviour.” (p.57)“You are born modern, you do not become so.” (p.78)“Colonization was, in this sense, a world-scale coup de th''tre, which leaves deep nostalgic traces everywhere, even when it is collapsing. For the Old World, it represents the unique experience of an idealized substitution of values [...] a substitution which, at a stroke short-circuited the destiny of these values in their countries of origin. [...] They are eradicated by the ideal model which they have themselves secreted. And development will never again take place in the form of progressive alignment.” (p.84)“What is thought in Europe becomes reality in America - everything that disappears in Europe reappears in San Francisco!” (p.91)“Americans believe in facts but not in facticity.” (p.92)“This conformity makes American society close to the primitive societies, in which it would be absurd to distinguish oneself morally by disobeying the collective ritual.” (p.101)“Democracy demands that all if its citizens begin the race even. Egalitarianism demands that they finish the race even.” (p.102)