The United States of Anger
By Gavin Esler
Michael Joseph. 344 pages. £17.99
ISBN 0 7181 4235 7
Gavin Esler is the chief North America Correspondent of the BBC and has travelled widely over the US, interviewing many people in the course of reporting to the UK. Are the United States Angry? Why are they angry?
He says: 'This book is an account of how the rules of American life have changed profoundly in the 1990s, upsetting the foundations most Americans have taken for granted in the past 50 years. One result is that the US government is now routinely blamed by many of its citizens for every ill which befalls them ... from the alligator in the pond of their vacation home to the apparent moral, social and cultural decline they see all around them.' (Why the alligator in the pond? One of the strengths of this book is the wealth of illustrations from travels round the States. The alligator in question was a protected species in a pond near a holiday home. As far as the lady was concerned, its disturbing presence was the government's fault.)
