Reading 20

“To read a foreigner’s reflections on one’s own national history can be an unsettling experience. In such a work, many if not all of the characters and situations are recognizable, but the angles and perspectives seem a little distorted. In some places the author explains too much, belabouring the obvious; in others he seems to assume vast amounts of knowledge that only specialists would have. At times the writer seems to exercise a delicate and unnecessary political caution; at others he or she disregards the most obvious and sensible conventions and taboos. Sometimes bafflingly opaque, sometimes irritatingly banal, foreigners seldom get things exactly right; but the unusual angle from which they view our familiar terrain often gives foreigners the ability to see things that natives miss.”

- Walter Russell Mead, from the preface to the UK edition of God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (2007)