Publisher's Synopsis
The trade between Britain and Europe, and the United States, has dealt in many commodities, bullion and whale-oil, slaves and coffee, scotch and crack. But down the centuries the most flourishing traffic has been in mutual fantasy: on the one hand Dracula's castle, the Sistine Chapel, thatched cottages and cream teas; on the other, the wide prairie, the thunderous Pacific, the Chisholm Trail and Route 66. Since Plato, the Old World has been inventing its own images of the New; since explorers called it into being, the New World has been looking to the Old, borrowing old traditions to write the new rules. This book examines the trade in ideas and its implications.
