Culture Smart! USA: A Quick Guide to Customs & Etiquette (ISBN 1558687904)

Barnstorming the USA:
On first sight, this is a paperback that one would expect on the rack of an airport news shop or in the travel section of your local bookstore. Normally I walk past, unless I have time to kill. Then I pick one up, leaf through the ho-hum for a couple seconds and replace it on the rack. So why did I read Gina Teague's Culture Smart! USA cover to cover? First of all, it is a good looking and well written book. The layout is attractive, with well-spaced type and clearly relevant thumbnail illustrations, though the non-US reader might beg a caption or two to explain some of them. Above all, Gina Teague masters simple, contemporary idiomatic English that is almost poetic and a joy to read. ESL readers will be challenged by not a few expressions and usages, but then it will give them something to talk about with their new US acquaintances. Culture Smart! USA is upbeat-just as the USA would like to see itself. It gives an almost Disney, hometown comfort, radiating optimism and self-confidence. The number of topics covered in a balanced way and consistent style is quite remarkable. In 164 pocketbook size pages, Teague barnstorms the time, space, people, and practices of the US cultural territory with considerable breadth, swooping close to the ground then moving on. Profundity is not expected in a book like this, so the shadowy side streets of US history, politics and social systems, as well as shanty towns of economy, ecology and ethics are pointed at in passing overhead, but without touching down or interrupting the "What, me worry?" ride. We are, after all, passing over "America" where yesteryear is never more than a quick fuel stop as USians race toward their manifest destiny, having possessed the promised land "from sea to shining sea," on a mission of faith to save the planet and the universe though democracy, free enterprise and born-again salespersonship. Culture Smart! USA is a trip to the States, with all their seduction. The visitor, no doubt a continental European, is even encouraged to leave his or her "jaded cynicism at home." "America," as it names itself, oblivious of a larger America, or perhaps confident that being the rest of the world's future, it can never be called in for questioning. It aspires to fill our bodily and spiritual hungers, our longings with its inexpensive and abundant fast food, from Big Mac to one-minute meditation, so we can get on to other things. What other things....? To whatever is next, of course in the American Dream. Brief handbooks of this nature run the gauntlet between being data dumps and thin interpretations of culture. There are dangers on both sides, inadequate and inaccurate detail vs. stereotyping and platitudes particularly if the target audience is not clear. This book seems to avoid both traps. It presents itself as country and culture briefing, a "starter." It focuses on the person coming at least for a time to live and work in the USA for at least a time or often, as opposed to the tourist or the student, though both are likely to find it a good read. There are a few disturbing things in the book. New England is no longer conservative in a neo con USA. The single sentence about Harry Truman and Joe McCarthy would have us believe that they had a common political agenda, while in fact they were bitter enemies. Foreign visitors to the US often complain of superficiality and, perhaps it demands too much of a small guide to dispel that impression. Despite having lived some years in most regions of the US, I went through the book with the uneasy feeling that I was part of the "The Truman Show." The places and behaviors seemed familiar but, like Jim Carrey in that film, I had trouble breaking out to connect with the real people I know-and the streets were too squeaky clean. To sum up, a well written, useful book on the nation that appears to be at once the world's greatest promise and the world's greatest problem. It supplements and is to be supplemented by other perspectives, such as Diane Asitimbay's What's up America, Ted Stanger's Sacrés Americains and above all by keeping a careful eye on ones experience. Dr. George Simons at www.diversophy.com is an author of the Cultural Detective USA™ and of Doing Business with the USA DIVERSOPHY®