In 2007, as a 29-year-old journalist, Hansen won a fellowship to Turkey. Eight years later she published this combination memoir–reports from the Middle East–in depth description of Turkish politics. In combination Hansen delivers a deeply insightful description of what America looks like to foreigners in the 21st century. Premise number one is that most of the world has to pay attention to America while Americans, on the whole, know nothing at all about how they have manipulated the politics, economies, and lives of Turks, Egyptians, Afghans, Iraqis, and Iranians (countries she sends reports from) to name just a few of the countries in the world where the U.S., its spy services, armies, and multinational corporations have asserted their will.
At a deeper level, Hansen unwraps what it means to be American and how it has come to pass that we are inculcated with the belief in American Exceptionalism: our way of life is superior to all others. Why do we fail to ask why other people and their countries need our largesse before we consider them “mature” and “developed?” Aren’t there other ways of living that might be more socially supportive, equitable, less divisive, and where the distribution of wealth is not skewed toward an oligarchy of tech and corporate moguls with more money than 99% of the rest of the country? What does American adherence to “freedom” mean in a country built on slavery, the decimation of indigenous people? And what does it mean when “freedom” is imposed by force on the Philippines, Cuba, Guatemala, Vietnam, Iraq, Argentina, Grenada, Greece, Iran, Turkey, and a list, if you were ever taught about it, far longer than this one.