Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Americanists in Unexpected Places
Chapter 2: The Predicament of National Character
Chapter 3: Pictures from an Institution: The Salzburg Seminar & Postwar Mitteleuropa
Chapter 4: To the Heart of Europe: F.O. Matthiessen's Baedeker

Epilogue
Bibliography

About the Author

George Blaustein is Assistant Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Amsterdam.

Reviews

"Does the 'American Dream' also rest on a secret yearning for catastrophe? Addressing this question in four elegantly and breezily narrated 'stories,' George Blaustein's Nightmare Envy succeeds brilliantly in recasting our understanding of the democratization of Germany after World War II and the so-called 'Americanization' of Europe." --Werner Sollors, Harvard University, author of The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s
"Just after World War II, when the US was a shiny new global power, American Studies was fashioned as therapy for a ruined world. Now that the United States is exhibit A in a newly ruined world, George Blaustein offers a well-timed and insightful reappraisal of that earlier moment of odd American trauma-envy." --Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University