With Americans of Past and Present Days — Book Summary & Review
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With Americans of Past and Present Days Summary
In With Americans of Past and Present Days, Jean Jules Jusserand organizes his argument around a recurring contrast: Americans as they were in the Revolution and Americans as they appear to a visiting European diplomat “now,” and he uses that mirror to judge how national myths travel. The book is structured less like a straight chronology and more like a sequence of portraits and diplomatic observations, where Jusserand keeps returning to how France and the United States interpreted the same events with different vocabularies. One concrete place you feel the method is the chapter on the American Revolution (1775-1783), where he treats the war not only as military history but as a negotiation between ideals and practical governance; he’s alert to how leaders sell legitimacy to skeptical audiences. He also repeatedly leans on biographical framing—people become arguments—so that his comparisons between “past” and “present” don’t float abstractly.
Jusserand’s most useful sections are the ones that track how French participation shaped American self-understanding after the fact. He doesn’t pretend the relationship was always harmonious; instead, he shows how memory gets curated by states, veterans, and writers, and how that curation affects what each side thinks the other side “is.” If you’re expecting a modern scholarly apparatus, you’ll be disappointed: he writes with the confidence of a diplomat and the rhythm of a memoirist, not with the heavy documentation habits of later academic historians. That said, the book’s value comes from a specific, consistent question Jusserand keeps asking—what does America mean when you strip away the slogans—and he returns to it often enough that the repetition becomes a scaffold.
Limitation: it’s a European lens with occasional period blind spots, and it won’t satisfy readers who want exhaustive coverage of every American political faction or a balanced, data-driven account of all diplomatic episodes.
Key Takeaways from With Americans of Past and Present Days
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American Revolution (1775-1783) framing: Jusserand treats the war as legitimacy-making, not only battlefield outcomes or treaties.
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Past vs present contrast: Jusserand uses recurring comparisons to show how national myths change meaning over time.
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Biographical argument method: people in Jusserand’s portraits function as evidence for how France and America interpret each other.
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French participation memory: he tracks how French involvement gets curated, then used to explain later American self-image.
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Diplomatic viewpoint limitation: Jusserand writes as an observer with access, which sharpens tone but narrows perspective.
Who Should Read This
Someone who’s trying to understand how the U.S.-France relationship became a story people keep retelling will enjoy Jusserand’s approach. If you’re reading history for how nations narrate themselves—especially when you’re tired of purely military timelines—this will feel like a useful change of pace.
Who Shouldn't Read This
Someone who wants exhaustive, up-to-the-minute scholarship with modern citation standards will likely feel shortchanged by Jusserand’s early-20th-century style. If you’re hunting for a comprehensive survey of American internal politics across the whole “past and present” span, this book will leave you wanting more coverage than it promises.
Editor's Verdict
Jusserand’s best move is using the Revolution chapter and its legitimacy focus to connect ideals to governance, then echoing that through later portraits. The real limitation is that the book’s European diplomatic viewpoint narrows what it can cover, so it won’t give you a full-spectrum American political map. This hits hardest for anyone rebuilding their sense of why international relationships become cultural narratives—especially if you’ve recently grown frustrated with dry, strictly chronological history.
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With Americans of Past and Present Days — Frequently Asked Questions
About Jean Jules Jusserand
Jean Jules Jusserand (1855–1932) was a French diplomat and writer. After serving in the French foreign service, he became France’s ambassador to the United States (1902–1925), living and working closely with American political and social life. He is credible on U.S. history and culture because he observed and documented American institutions firsthand over decades. His notable works include With Americans of Past and Present Days and The American People, Their History and Their Civilization.
