Pretty damning that a person who graduated from an Ivy League school can still be such a dumbass at almost 30, seemingly going to live in other countries without reading a book about their history or even sitting down to read the Wikipedia article.

She tries to include these anecdotes of her fumbling her way through being an American abroad but they just cement her as a dolt, making her switches to the omnipresent “history gloss” voice ring hollow. There’s also bizarre confusions that popped out to even me, like claiming This Republic of Suffering was about the barbarity of Americans?? Or that Congress “passed” the Truman Doctrine???

The overwhelming effect is her being endlessly corrected by her friends in other countries and the people she’s interviewed, and you end up wanting to read books written by them instead. Try The Jakarta Doctrine instead if you want an approachable path into violent US imperialism.