Ciao, America by Beppe Severgnini
I am definitely on a travel memoirs kick. This time, instead of reading about Americans elsewhere, I read about Italians in America. Severgnini is an Italian author who spent a year living in Washington DC in the ’90s. The book was milder than I expected. I had read that it was hysterically funny (it was amusing) and that it trashed American culture (pu-leeze…Americans are so self-centered, we need to get over ourselves). It’s an entertaining look at American life (good and bad, but I never got the impression he was out to bash Americans). What was really interesting was his postscript…5 years later Severgnini returned to the US and found Americans more jaded and irritated. Kinda sad.
