THE UNEASY FRENCH-AMERICAN RELATIONS

Richard F. Kuisel, The French Way: How France Embraced and Rejected American Values and Power (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2012) ("This study examines how, why, and with what consequences America served as a foil for France in the final two decades of the twentieth century. It is the story of France's effort at designing its own path to modernity, a path that moved at tangent from the one represented by America. " Id. at xi-xii. "It is my principal task to examine how the French perceived America, why the came to measure themselves against Americans, and how they designed policies in response to this model in the final decades of the century. The inquiry leads to the larger question of whether or not they found a divergent 'French path' to modernity in contrast to that of the American way. Had the French, by the end of the century, charted a distinctive and viable alternative to what they transatlantic cousins championed as the only way forward?" Id. at xii-xiii.).