This book is a few years old. I picked it up in a Boston Logan airport bookstore last month and finished reading it by the time I landed in Paris. At first I had pegged it as a book on business. But the author does not write about negotiation secrets or anything. What he does do is present an outstanding narrative on describing the powerhouse that is the European Union. First he sets about laying out how Americans have not been taking the EU seriously. He uses the example of a typical American couple that goes on a road trip and buys/uses what it thinks are "very American" products. And I felt a little embarrassed because he could have just as well been describing me. My concentration in college, as part of my Political Science major, was in International Relations and so I felt a bit miffed at myself for learning about the significance of the EU through this book. But I guess that is more or less how Jack Welch, whose head-on conflict with Mario Monti (the EU Competition Commissioner) has been described with glee through a whole chapter by the author, must have felt on a particular day back in 2001.
The author also describes his family's personal experience with the EU's universal healthcare system, which I found very enlightening (and now I know why that lamb dinner I had in Reykjavik last year cost me a pretty penny). Other topics such as how the lack of a stronger military presence (when compared to the military of the US) in the EU isn't necessarily a bad thing for the Europeans and the benefits of having implemented a much simpler cellular phone format over there are also discussed about in concise detail.
The best thing about this book is the organization and its prose. I actually read some of its chapters in no order and did not feel confused at all. The author's writing is clear and very easy to understand. I could have been chatting with him in a quiet bar in downtown Boston.
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