Product Description

To Americans accustomed to unilateralism abroad and social belt-tightening at home, few books could be more revelatory—or controversial—than this timely, lucid, and informative portrait of the new European Union.

Now comprising 25 nations and 450 million citizens, the EU has more people, more wealth, and more votes on every international body than the United States. It eschews military force but offers guaranteed health care and free university educations. And the new “United States of Europe” is determined to be a superpower. Tracing the EU’s emergence from the ruins of World War II and its influence everywhere from international courts to supermarket shelves, T. R. Reid explores the challenge it poses to American political and economic supremacy. The United States of Europe is essential reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408877 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
While the United States flexes its economic and military muscles around the world as the dominant global player, it may soon have company. According to the Washington Post's T.R. Reid, the nations of Europe are setting aside differences to form an entity that's gaining strength, all seemingly unbeknownst to the U.S. and its citizens. The new Europe, Reid says, "has more people, more wealth, and more trade than the United States of America," plus more leverage gained through membership in international organizations and generous foreign aid policies that reap political clout. Reid tells how European countries were willing to discontinue their individual centuries-old currencies and adopt the Euro, the monetary unit that is now a dominant force in world markets. This is noteworthy not just for exploring the considerable economic impact of the Euro, but also for what that spirit of cooperation means for every facet of Europe in the 21st century, where governments and citizens alike believe that the rewards of banding together are worth a loss in sovereignty. Reid's most compelling portrait of this trend is in the young Europeans known as "Generation E" who see themselves not as Spaniards or Czechs but simply as Europeans. To illustrate America's obliviousness to this trend, Reid tells of former GE CEO Jack Welch, who never bothered to factor European objections into a proposed multi-billion dollar merger with Honeywell, leading to the deal being torpedoed and Welch disgraced. But what is most striking in The United States of Europe is the contrast between the new Europe and the United States. The Europeans cannot match the raw military size of the U.S., but by mixing wealth with diplomacy and continental unity (helped along by antipathy toward George W. Bush's brand of Americanism), they are forming an innovative and powerful superpower. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
While "old Europe" is most often portrayed as more bark than bite in its differences with the current U.S. administration, NPR commentator and former Washington Post European bureau chief Reid finds the E.U. as a whole "determined to change a world that has been dominated by Americans." The opening chapters quickly summarize everyday Europeans’ love-hate relationship with the States, the legacies of the 20th-century wars, and the creation of the Euro. The center chapters present GE as a case study in transatlantic trade gone wrong ("Welch’s Waterloo") as well as other snafus that show Europe attempting to dominate market share of everything from cell phones to pharmaceuticals. A chapter detailing what’s left of Europe’s welfare states is followed by a relatively bleak assessment of Europe’s armies, and the spin that the E.U. is betting on economic "soft power" for eventual global dominance. The concluding chapters warn that the U.S. ignores Europe’s new 25-nation strong union at its economic and political peril, but also draw attention to Europe as a huge, tariff-free market and potential sharer of global burdens. There’s little surprising here, but Reid’s primer on recent U.S. European relations genially summarizes an evolving, if often reluctant, partnership.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Anyone who even glances at international headlines already knows there’s a powerful new presence emerging in what used to be known as "the Old World." Reid provides a strong introduction to the EU’s unprecedented exercise in international cooperation. While some reviewers take issue with what they view as overstatement, oversimplification, or selective inclusion of facts, most, if not all, agree with Reid’s underlying message: Americans need to pay far more attention to the activity across the Atlantic. We’ve been duly warned.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Great Service.
The book I received was in better condition than the report said. It was sent in a timely manner.

Well-written, but factually wrong...
T. R. Reid's 'The United States of Europe' is a surprisingly entertaining read, considering it deals with something as boring as the European Union. Unfortunately, in my reading of it, I found so many factual errors and over-generalizations that I cannot recommend it as an introduction to the EU. That's ironic, since it's clearly meant as an introduction.

Let me give a few examples:
"The citizens of the EU use a standard license plate, birth certificate and passport (although each country still gets to pick its preferred passport color: a red cover for Britain, dark blue for Poland and of course green for Ireland)." There is an EU license plate, but not every country has implemented them. As far as I know there is no EU birth certificate (it's certainly not implemented in most countries) and all new EU passports have burgundy colored covers.

"The Swedish referendum on the euro had a tragic outcome: the nation's foreign minister, Anna Lindh, campaigning hard for the pro-euro side, was approached a few days before the election by a disheveled man with a dagger in hand. He stabbed her repeatedly, and she died a few hours later. Police later arrested a suspect, but were never able to determine the exact relationship between the euro campaign and this lethal assault." That's because there was no link between the murder and the campaign. The murderer was a mentally disturbed man who is now serving a life sentence in a Swedish prison.

"Since every major European airport has a big train station in the basement of the terminal, Euro-travelers can jump off the plane and straight onto the TGV train to complete the journey." Since TGV trains mainly operate in France (with 1 line going to London, 1 to Germany and 1 going through Belgium, Netherlands and into Germany) riding the TGV from an airport cannot be said to be a general option for most Euro-travelers.

"You can get a 'Danish' in Denmark, but no Dane ever calls it a Danish pastry. In fact no Europeans use that term, except for TV-comedians making fun of Americans. In Denmark, and in most of Europe, that breakfast pastry is generally called Wienerbrod, or 'Vienna bread.'" In Britain and Ireland it's called a Danish, in Germany and Austria it's called a 'Kopenhagener'. That's a big chunk of the EU.

Reid several times writes about both Switzerland and Norway as if they're EU-member states, even though they're not, and he tries to give the impression that all of Europe celebrates May 9th ('Europe Day') like another Fourth of July, even though all Europeans I know are completely unaware the day is even celebrated!

Factual errors and overgeneralizations like these mar the book throughout and give readers a wrong impression of how things really are in Europe. That's a shame, since Reid clearly has a talent for writing about the EU in an entertaining way.

Perhaps a bit over the top
This is an excellent introduction to the European Union, but I fear that Reid exagerrates a bit. The EU is certainly powerful and many of its principles excellent, but Reid seems a little biased in its favor. There are also a few tedious chapters (Do we really need to know THAT much about Jack Welch or Eurovision?), but overall this book is a great read if you'd like to learn about the EU.