The European fascination with America is as old as America itself. Ever since the early explorers sent their tantalizing reports back to the Old World, America has been both a physical place and a mythological region of the mind. In the words of a pioneer of American studies in Europe, Sigmund Skard, “the image of the United States carried a vicarious value, positive and negative; while depicting America it came at the same time to serve and to reflect, in a curious and revealing way, the needs of the Europeans themselves.” From the very beginning, the dream of America was also a European dream of what life and society might become if the constraints of a stratified and largely static civilization could be left behind. Thus, from de Tocqueville to Dickens to Alistair Cooke, reflections on the American journey are not just an attempt to paint a realistic picture of the new nation, they are also an exploration of self and a testing of stereotypes and preconceptions, both general and individual.

This process has been further complicated in the postwar period by the ubiquitous presence in Europe of a wide range of products of American popular culture. The European consciousness is constantly exposed to images of American life, not just in the familiar creations of Hollywood and the omnipresent rhythms of popular music, but increasingly in soap operas and other television series, in continuous news coverage courtesy of CNN, and in the inanities of TV commercials.