Here is a tasty statistic: when the US went into Iraq a survey showed that America's popularity plunged everywhere - except in France. The French opposed the invasion vehemently, but the country was already so saturated in anti-Americanism that the index scarcely flickered. Which makes Philippe Roger, a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, a brave and lonely man. His book is that seemingly impossible thing: an attack on French Americophobia written by a Frenchman. For, as he demonstrates in this scholarly yet highly entertaining work, the French allergy to all things American is a national...