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The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, by Michael Booth
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The Christian Science Monitor's #1 Best Book of the Year
A witty, informative, and popular travelogue about the Scandinavian countries and how they may not be as happy or as perfect as we assume, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People offers up the ideal mixture of intriguing and revealing facts” (Laura Miller, Salon).
Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than ten years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely book he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another.
Why are the Danes so happy, despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People Michael Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades. They may very well be almost nearly perfect, but it isn’t easy being Scandinavian.
- Sales Rank: #25163 in Books
- Published on: 2016-02-02
- Released on: 2016-02-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.29" h x 1.10" w x 5.45" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Review
“Bill Bryson goes to Scandinavia.” ―Christian Science Monitor (Ten Best Books of January)
“Booth's extremely funny character analysis of Scandinavia (which includes the adjacent Arctic-Circle floaters, Iceland and Finland) gives an incisive yet comprehensive overview of each of these reputedly lucky lands...His chapters betray a clear affection for the icy region he calls home, and gradually allow a clearer identity for each country to emerge.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Outrageously entertaining...Like members of a family, each of these five nations, despite a strong shared resemblance, has its own character, and Booth really is the guy you want to explain the differences to you. The Almost Nearly Perfect People offers up the ideal mixture of intriguing and revealing facts.” ―Laura Miller, Salon
“Booth's project is essentially observational; it aspires to a comic genre that might be called Euro-exotica. The form was well established by the time Twain published The Innocents Abroad in 1869, and it has been carried through the twentieth century by writers as varied as S. J. Perelman and Peter Mayle....In this sense, Booth's book is as much about Anglo-American power as it is about the Nordic way.” ―The New Yorker
“Part travelogue, part cultural history, Michael Booth's book about Nordic countries is crammed with some truly bizarre facts.” ―Entertainment Weekly
“The result of Booth's ethnographic snooping is this insightful, entertaining and very funny book. Booth also happens to be a terrific ambassador to the often insular and sometimes baffling behavior of the Nordic peoples….Anthropological research has never been this much fun.” ―Chicago Tribune
“A lively exploration that's part ethnography and part travel guide…at its core, The Almost Nearly Perfect People is driven by genuine curiosity and appreciation for a singular part of the world most Americans know very little about--and could stand to learn a thing or two from.” ―The Daily Beast (Hot Reads)
“A humorous deconstruction of the belief that the Scandi nations are each a social paradise while affirming that life in one of the five can be quite congenial. Finally, an answer to the pressing question, how can Danes be so happy while paying such high taxes?” ―The New York Daily News
“An entertaining, authoritative, and often funny travelogue.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“It is said that most people can't tell one Nordic country from another. Maybe so, but what they do know is that these nations are exceptional. This collective exceptionalism is worth studying up close and Michael Booth's book is a good place to begin. He writes with irony and charm and in the end, much affection for his adopted home in Denmark.” ―The Huffington Post
“Booth is often funny, and he keeps us engaged.” ―The Week
“With his tongue never too far from his cheek, British journalist Michael Booth takes an ironic scalpel to what seems to be the modern obsession with the so-called perfection of life in the five Northern European countries in his The Almost Nearly Perfect People....a truly interesting and enjoyable piece of writing.” ―Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“[Booth's] dry wit permeates the book…He has written an immersive, insightful, and often humorous examination of a most curious culture.” ―Publishers Weekly
“If, like many, you may never make it to Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Finland, or Sweden, this is your book, and Booth is your guide. He is congenial, game, funny, and observant. And he tells it like it was…” ―Booklist
“Booth brings a deliciously droll sense of humor to his mission.” ―BookPage
“An enjoyable, funny romp through the region.” ―The Telegraph (London)
“Booth offers an affectionate, observant, engaging look at Scandinavia, where trust, modesty and equality proudly prevail.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“I laughed out loud . . . A lively and endearing portrait of our friends in the north, venerated globally for their perfectly balanced societies but, it turns out, as flawed as the rest of us--or at least only almost perfect.” ―The Observer (UK)
“A rollicking travelogue . . . [and] a welcome rejoinder to those who cling to the idea of the Nordic region as a promised land.” ―Financial Times
“Sorry, liberals, Scandinavian countries aren't utopias.” ―The New York Post
“Entertaining stuff and very readable.” ―The Independent (UK)
“Booth is an assiduous excavator of entertaining facts.” ―The Times (London)
About the Author
Michael Booth is the author of five works of non-fiction, including The Almost Nearly Perfect People. His writing appears regularly in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Telegraph, and Condé Nast Traveler magazine, among many other publications globally. He is the Copenhagen correspondent for Monocle magazine and Monocle 24 radio, and travels regularly to give talks and lectures on the Nordic lands and their peculiar, nearly perfect people. He lives in Denmark with his wife and two sons.
Most helpful customer reviews
46 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
funny, trip that enlightens as it entertains
By Bradley Weismann
Now I know why we left the old country.
Michael Booth’s new survey of the Nordic lands is a feisty, funny, trip that enlightens as it entertains.
The English travel and food writer has a long-standing connection to Denmark through his wife, and the book originated in his chagrin at Denmark’s consistent rating as the world’s happiest, most progressive society. “They don’t look that happy to me,” he thought, and what results is Booth’s frank and acerbic levering up of the great assumptions about these cultures’ superiority to take a peek at what squirms about in the shadows beneath them.
As he travels through Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, Booth does an admirable job of blending reportage, anecdote, and historical contextualization to present a balanced sketch of each society. This is a tricky business – Booth plumbs the national stereotypes for validity, and confronts his own ingrained generalizations, revealing a much bumpier, more complex reality.
Not that this is an expose or stab job. Booth is keen to remind the reader that in a world where poverty, conflict, disease, and injustice are par for the course, the problems of the highly developed, affluent North are relatively minor. Additionally, he espouses the virtues that makes these societies work – “trustworthiness, accountability, openness, a strong civil society, long-termism, individual self-control.” However, those of Scandinavian heritage raised with an intimidating sense of where they came from will find this study a big fat relief -- as some of these stereotypes are all too grounded in fact.
For instance, it seems that Danes are not the most happy, they are simply the best at pretending that everything is just fine. The Norwegians come off as not-too-bright, right-wing tribalists rendered effete by their vast oil revenues. Iceland? Vikings led astray into modern financial incoherence by their piratical tendencies. Finland is portrayed as composed of tough, taciturn binge-drinkers. And Sweden, the economic leader of them all, is a stultifyingly conformist culture, the ultimate nanny state, with an enormous immigrant problem.
In fact, the problems of multiculturalism crop up again and again in “Almost.” These host cultures are incredibly homogenous, not just culturally but genetically. The need for workers willing to do the mundane tasks that keep things running falls more and more to refugees, and inclusive philosophies are being tested now up North, with intermittent success. Enforcing tolerance and avoiding racial stratification is the new challenge.
The overall sense that Booth leaves the reader with is that, like a typical American suburb, Scandinavia is a nice place to be from. The traits I thought were my family’s alone are more broadly based. The aversion to conflict, the lack of emotionality, the stiff politesse, the smugness, the non-specific gloominess, the nagging sense of personal unimportance, the shyness, the yearning for universal approval, and wielding relentless, lethal niceness as a weapon all are found among the people Booth meets on his way.
Booth quotes journalist Niels Lillelund --“In Denmark we do not raise the inventive, the hardworking, the ones with initiative, the successful or the outstanding, we create hopelessness, helplessness and the sacred, ordinary mediocrity,” and The Economist – “Scandinavia is a great place in which to be born . . . but only if you are average. . . . if you are extraordinary, if you have big dreams, great visions, or are just a bit different, you will be crushed, if you do not emigrate first.” Why leave heaven? Well, if for you it's hell.
The idea that these “perfect” societies tend to iron out or exclude the unique, eccentric, and enterprising individual makes me understand why my dissatisfied, grumpy, free-thinking ancestors got the hell out of there. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling” has more than a dollop of truth in it. Of course, Booth's observations have stirred debate, as they should. "Almost" is great look below the surface.
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
By David
This was a highly informative and at the same time fun (as in LOL funny) read. I will be making my first visit to four of the five Nordic countries later this year. Unlike one reviewer here, I did not find the book biased at all. Booth points out the faults and rivalries amongst these five nations, but he certainly doesn't hold back high praise for them, either. In fact, he concludes by saying he hopes these five nations never form a Nordic Union, because if they do, the rest of us don't have a chance. High praise indeed for what the people of these small nations have accomplished, something far beyond their small populations (California has more people than do these five Nordic nations combined). I found the book to be remarkably balanced, and it has increased my interest in the region enough to want to read more books about the Nordic people. I would highly recommend this book to anyone planning to visit the region, or who is just interested in the Nordic nations. This is the kind of book that I believe even natives would find both interesting and entertaining.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
An amusing and perceptive reappraisal of the Scandinavian ‘miracle’
By Lobo
The book is an excellent overview of Scandinavia, and as someone who moved to Sweden 20 years ago, I’m simply amazed by the breadth and depth of the author’s knowledge of each of these very diverse countries: he’s managed to dig beneath the (often very orchestrated and carefully controlled) propaganda and spin, and uncover much more of the ‘real’ experience of living in these dark and often inhospitable lands.
A few small things bothered me about the book. Firstly, I certainly got the feeling that familiarity has bred contempt - so most of Booth’s disapprobation is aimed specifically at the Danes. As I very often visit Denmark to experience the country’s much more relaxed lifestyle, better manners, vastly superior food, and nicer architecture than Stockholm, much of the barbed commentary aimed exclusively at his fellow Danes seemed contrived and sometimes bordering on sour grapes.
In a similar vein, Booth often refers glowingly to the ‘reforms’ implemented in the Swedish welfare system - comparing them favorably to what he seems to consider Danish public profligacy. But he fails to look beyond the neoliberal spin and see that the semi-privatized Swedish health system is falling apart, the Free Schools are draining massive amounts of public money into private hands while performing abysmally, we’ve even seen the nightmare spectacle of sick people quite literally dying while begging the (privatized) emergency service to send a (privatized) ambulance , and in general the major winners from the changes have been a small band of companies and individuals, while the overall tax burden on the vast majority hasn’t changed significantly, in return for much worse results.
In any case, overall I liked Booth’s perceptive look at Scandinavian society - and particularly enjoyed the Swedish chapters. As an incomer from the self-deprecating British middle-class (self-reflexively running down British towns, mores and institutions as a matter of ingrained habit) it comes as something of a shock that Swedes are totally and unshakeably convinced of the overwhelming superiority of - well basically everything Swedish. This is held to be true even when the evidence shows otherwise. So if you’re willing to grit your teeth and accept frequent lectures on that basis (and being seen to even slightly question this thesis will cause barely hidden resentment and bad feeling - almost the only time you’ll see a Swede visibly annoyed) then the other positive aspects of Scandinavian society (consensus, good work ethic, minimal conflict, civilized if rather boring city life) will all combine to give you a pretty nice, contented, but mostly unexciting Scandinavian existence - and Booth’s book forms a useful and amusing primer.
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