Melville House Books

It’s the biggest phenomenon in French book culture just now: The French book market is experiencing a glut of books “devoted to deciphering and explaining the other red, white, and blue.” According to Elisabeth Eaves in this report for Slate, “Parisian editors are dining out on a new subgenre that includes tirades, serious academic tomes, election-timed quickies by celebrity journalists, and even a novel, Frenchy, about a Parisian living in Texas when the United States invaded Iraq.” The general impression? “America is a shark. Full of religious zealots. Who are deeply divided against themselves.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.