While in Ireland this summer I bought a book called "Why do People Hate America?" by Ziauddin Sardar and Merrill Davies, despite the relative cost of books abroad, because:

a) Like most Americans, I genuinely wondered why; I am, and most of those I know are, pretty nice folks...and

b)This may have been my 10th or 11th extended stay abroad, in places from east and south Africa to Iceland, and I'd never before encountered the level of Anti-American feeling rampant this summer, even in a country with which we usually have pretty close ties.

c)After seeing what was in the daily press in the UK and Ireland and more importantly, realizing what was NOT in ours, I wasn't sure I could get the book at all in the US. This was unfounded; it's available on Amazon.

Nothing I found in it was factually incorrect when I researched it, and it is not a rant; it's pretty well reasoned. When you complete it, however, you have no difficulty answering the question. Whether or not you agree with its thesis, it should be incumbent upon all of us to understand how we're viewed in the rest of the world. It is diametrically opposed to what we're taught in school America is supposed to be about. Even though I came of age in the 60's and had opposed Viet Nam, there was much there I had either been unaware of or had thought isolated instances. The mismatch between what most Americans think we're about and what our government has been up to, which is perceived as hypocrisy, rather than apathetic ignorance on our parts, is one of the principal reasons we're hated. I'd recommend the book as a generally braodening perspective.