Ciao, America! Review

Ciao, America by Bepe Severgnini is a memoir of sorts of an Italian author who lived in Washington, DC for a year. The book goes month by month describing his time in America including trips taken, activities he and his wife did and his overall perspective of Americans and how American's live. I enjoyed reading Ciao, America for the most part. His quips and jokes about everyday life in America for an Italian were amusing  like his trips to the local Safeway and attempts at getting a credit card. I soaked up every piece of information offered about how things are done, viewed, talked about, etc. in Italy. My view of the book turned around August, or the fifth chapter; Severgnini writes about taking trips in RVs and American's love of motels and fast food. The way he describes Americans in this parts puts an image in your head of everyone in sight being morbidly obese, niiave slobs; saying "the men disturbing tattoos, the women have the bewildered eyes of girls who have grown up too fast, and their blonde-haired children are happily eating fries and eggs drowned in butter adrift on oceans of grease." The rest of the book followed in this format--he would talk about this and that brought about by the month in which he was writing, then he would make huge generalizations about Americans and most of them were bad. I sincerely hope that all Italians, and anyone else from a different country, for that matter, does not feel the way Bepe Servergnini feels about Americans, because then I fear we will be working against some pretty hefty assumptions.