Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen was enjoying success as a journalist for a New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul. Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a city perched between East and West, and a naive sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures. But the most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country - and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline." --