French anti-Americanism has never been as much the focus of debate as it is today. This is
true both in France, where a crop of books has appeared on the subject, and in the United
States, for reasons linked to the French refusal to support the American invasion of Iraq.
Some authors have underlined the unchanging nature of the phenomenon, defining anti-
Americanism as a historical “constant” since the 18th century, or again an endlessly repetitive
“semantic block” to use Philippe Roger’s expression. Others, like Jean-François Revel, have
tried to show what lay hidden behind such a fashionable ideology: a deep-rooted critique of
economic liberalism and American democracy (...)
