Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century

Moderates and conservatives skeptical of the wartime proliferation of anti-U.S. treatises will find themselves falling unexpectedly in love with Julia Sweig's brilliant and provocative work, "Friendly Fire." This is the best nonfiction book I've read this year. Though the author is probably somewhere on the center-left, "Friendly Fire" is no knee-jerk, know-nothing, America-bashing critique. Sweig provides a trenchant and thoughtful analysis of other nations' growing antipathy to American foreign policy, completely without any ax to grind. Sweig's region-by-region analysis is practically a blueprint for how to get American foreign policy back on track while at the same time, keeping American interests in mind. Sweig offers the kind of proscriptive analysis too seldom found in the cheap, Michael Moore-style lefty critiques. She not only identifies the problems in U.S. foreign policy, she also offers solutions, including many that defy easy ideological categorization. As brilliant as this book is, Sweig's writing style is conversational and breezy - a sheer delight. "Friendly Fire" combines the intellectual heft of a Pulitzer Prize-winner with the easy-to-read narrative of a book that can remain atop the best seller list for a year. I loved this book.