For much of American history, Americans and Europeans (particularly Western Europeans) have been locked in an elaborate love-hate relationship. Though Richard Pells surveys the whole of American history, his focus in Not Like Us, as the subtitle indicates, is the post-1945 interaction of European and American culture. It has been, of course, in this American (Half-)Century that the cultural balance, along with the political and economic balance, has shifted. The result has been on most accounts the emergence of American hegemony.