The Eagle's Shadow: why America fascinates and infuriates the world Mark Hertsgaard Bloomsbury, 219pp, £12.99 ISBN 0747560536

The events of 11 September 2001 may be etched on everyone's memory, but for Mark Hertsgaard, a more important date is 26 October 2001, the day President Bush signed the infamous "USA Patriot Act". The new law defined "terrorism" in such broad terms that an American citizen who, for example, made a donation to a foreign anti-abortion group could be found guilty of aiding terrorism. It gave sweeping authority to the police and security agencies to search the homes of citizens, tap their phones, check their bank accounts, and even examine public library records to see what they were reading. It deprived roughly 20 million non-citizens of all their rights; some found themselves indefinitely detained on a mere hint of suspicion.

What kind of state would deny such basic civic freedoms? A state where discussion of domestic and foreign policy is conspicuous by its absence, where criticism is seen as treachery, and where the signature cultural activities are shopping, obsession with celebrity and watching junk television. Not surprisingly, Hertsgaard is concerned at what is happening to his beloved America.

He sets out to travel the world to discover why people hate America. He talks to miners in Cape Town, businessmen in Beijing, intellectuals in Paris and cab drivers in London, and concludes that globalisation is a euphemism for Americanisation. The further he travels from Europe, the more pronounced the hatred becomes. The American dialect is the tongue of international business, tourism and communication. American behaviour, fast food, jeans, television and consumption habits are in vogue everywhere. More and more nations have been forced to adopt a free-market, pro-corporate ideology that is making the rich richer and the poor poorer. But traditional societies, local cultures and norms are under threat.

Everywhere, he is asked more or less the same questions. How can America put a man on the moon and whole libraries on to computer chips, but still fear debate about evolution in its public schools? How can Americans be so materially rich and so lacking in family and community ties? So inundated with time-saving devices, yet perpetually stressed and hurried?

Hertsgaard has no real answers to these questions. He presents a set of blots on the landscape, but fails to connect them into a coherent analysis of US foreign policy, or America's role in the IMF, World Bank or World Trade Organisation, or US military intervention in far-off places. He tells us nothing about how the US domination of merchandised, global popular culture removes the space for other cultures to exist and express themselves, and let their ideas flower. Instead, he chooses to look at America itself and examine what is really wrong with the first hyperpower in history.

As a journalist and broadcaster, Hertsgaard knows America well, and he excels in outlining its intrinsic flaw. The US economy and political system, he tells us, are biased in favour of the rich. One in three Americans earns $8, or less, an hour; 40 per cent of American children live below or near the poverty line. Although half of all Americans invest in the stock market, around 90 per cent of all stock is actually owned by the richest 10 per cent of households. By 1999, Bill Gates alone owned as much wealth as the bottom 40 per cent of Americans. When Enron collapsed, its workers and average stockholders lost an estimated $25-$50m worth of pension funds, but the company executives had already walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars. So to project America as a land of equal opportunity and plenty for all is a cruel hoax. In reality, America is segregated by class and race.

The US press, Hertsgaard suggests, is "stenographer to American power". It peddles half-truths and pseudo-news that at once entrance and demean the public, encouraging it to be ignorant and stupid.

Hertsgaard pitches his prose at the level of his American audience. This is a simple book, simply written. But his conclusions will make grim reading for most Americans. "Our foreign policy", he states unequivocally, is "arrogant and cruel"; "our consumerist definition of prosperity is killing us and the planet". US democracy is an embarrassing den of corporate lobbyists, entrenched bureaucrats, egotistical multimillionaires and legal bribery. The US economy is aggregating wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Yet, to top it all: "Our business and political elite are insisting that our model should also be the world's model."

The only defence Hertsgaard offers is ignorance. Americans, he asserts repeatedly, are fair-minded people. The trouble is that none of Hertsgaard's findings is new; they are made at frequent intervals by increasing numbers of American writers. William J Lederer and Eugene Burdick's novel The Ugly American, a slashing expose of US foreign policy, was first published in 1958, and became a bestseller. Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, containing much of the same evidence as the Hertsgaard, topped the bestseller lists in America this summer. Ignorance is a threadbare excuse.

The real question is why abundant evidence fails to stir the American public consciousness, why Americans refuse to question their lifestyle and to accept responsibility for how their government operates in their name. The answer lies not in facts, but analysis. Hertsgaard is important proof, yet again, that being critical of America is neither an unAmerican activ-ity nor outright anti-Americanism. He merely begs the question of why criticism fails to dent US policy and shape public discussion of it, let alone prompt change. This is the real enigma that Americans should be pondering - for their own sake.

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