The Xenophobe's Guides

[gusl]

I sifted through these books at Books Etc in London back in November. They are at the same time entertaining and supposedly accurate portraits of national cultures. Accurate descriptions of collective personalities is not something that's easily found, since it's so hard to generalize about a group of people while remaining unbiased (maybe I should say "detached").

Now I want to write The Xenophobe's Guide to Brazilians.

Comments

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[rinku.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting, these were entertaining

[contrariandoer.livejournal.com]

Wow. These are great books. It would be fun to
read them. I briefly went through some of the
extracts. It seems this series of books aims
for humor instead of objectivity.

I am thinking of writing about the countries
I have lived in the past from the view of a
purely objective detached person - an
anthropologist, similarly to "Body Ritual
among the Nacirema" However, the problem is
I can get too objective and truthful that
some people find my writing offensive and
the governments might decide to ban my
writings. :)