Yankee Go Home Take Me With U

We can do little to escape the experience of the United States of America through many media: TV, pop music, youth culture, Hollywood, fast food. How do these traces and images affect us? Do we internalize them, want to be American? Do we (can we?) resist them? Is our desire for them a symptom of European pop culture's crisis? From black face minstrelsy, rap music and fiction to McDonald's, rock festivals and Star Trek, the cultural conception of America is critically unpacked by contributors from Europe, Israel and the USA. McKay rounds off the picture by offering a comprehensive introduction that explains theoretical approaches to Americanization from the thesis of Yankee cultural imperialism to America as site of liberation or fantasy.

M. E. GRANT is a pseudonym for Gard E. Norberg, and refers to his emigrant status. A Swede by birth, and a dedicated environmentalist, he has been a regular contributor to the British monthly, The Ecologist, and one of his essays written for that magazine was recently included in Visions Across the Americas, a collection of essays by mostly American writers - including such well-known authors as Gore Vidal, Isaac Asimov, Garrison Keillor, Maya Angelou, Ray Bradbury, Alice Walker, and Martin Luther King Jr. There is a saying in Swedish that, loosely translated, means "You chastise the one you love," and 'YANKEE GO HOME - But Please Take Me With You' is an hilariously funny critique of some of the more egregious manifestations of 'the American way of life'. But, as the title indicates, most foreigners critical of the United States would give almost anything for the privilege of living here. The 83-year old author owns some property in Costa Rica, but he and his American-born wife spend most of their time in a condo in Dania Beach, the Florida town that was founded by Danish immigrants, and which this year celebrates its centennial as the oldest city in Broward County.

"No, Dr. Zide, you may not inject my son's leg unless you do this chant." And for the next minute she chanted: 'Ah booh galla, rum das blah, blah, blah...' " Barry Zide, MD, New York. Every plastic surgeon has some good stories. This book is an anthology of some of the anecdotes from surgeons around the world. The book is dedicated to one of the great men in plastic surgery, Dr. Robert Goldwyn. As the editor of our journal, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, he has taught, commented, criticized and opined. His biting wit at times drove me to seek out Patty, my office manager, to share an editorial that simply had me howling with laughter. Satire, spoof, and serious commentary have been used to get his editorial point across. This book is therefore designed to honor this intellectual giant of a man in the language (stories), that he commands. All of the contributors are plastic surgeons, and all of the stories are true. The story of "Chu" was so moving, that the first half dozen times I recounted it to others, I was choked up to the point of tears. The anecdotes were collected into chapters that were little more than gross categorizations: Humor, Tragedy, Drama, and Poignant. The ensuing emotional roller-coaster afforded a look "Behind the Face of the Specialty" by reading the stories of the surgeons. All proceeds from this book will be donated to the Plastic Surgeons Education Foundation.

In this lively and provocative overview of postwar diplomacy in the region Robert Freeman Smith looks at the United States' relations with such countries as Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, as well as the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, observing regional policy and developments within the larger context of the cold war's U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Smith's analysis is well documented yet anecdotal: he broadens the standard foreign-policy focus to include America's cultural and economic influence on the region (and vice versa) and observes how these exchanges have in turn affected political and strategic decisions. Smith begins with an encapsulated history of the region before 1945 - the Monroe Doctrine, the building of the Panama Canal, the deployment of U.S. Marines to various sites of strife, and FDR's Good Neighbor Policy.