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xiv Introduction earned a reputation for being loud, obnoxious, demanding, insensitive, and generally ignorant of local customs and cultures. And while the novel The Ugly American is more than 60 years old, its fictional representation of this type seems as relevant today as it did during the Cold War. Any American expatriate who has lived for an extended time outside of the United States can tell numerous stories of unguarded moments when their non-American hosts have really expressed their true feelings for these “innocents abroad,” as Mark Twain called American tourists in his 1869 novel of the same name. In one particularly telling and humorous scene, Twain depicts a group of American tourists in Genoa, Christopher Columbus’s birthplace, being shown a letter written by the navigator himself by their local, Italian guide: “Come wis me, genteelmen!—come! I show you ze letter writing by Christopher Colombo!—write it himself!—write it wis his own hand!—come!” He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before us. The guide’s eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment with his finger: “What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! Handwriting Christopher Colombo!— write it himself!” We looked indifferent—unconcerned. The doctor examined the document very deliberately, during a painful pause.—Then he said, without any show of interest: “Ah—Ferguson—what—what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this?” “Christopher Colombo! Ze great Christopher Colombo!” Another deliberate examination. “Ah—did he write it himself or—or how?” “He write it himself!—Christopher Colombo! He’s own hand-writing, write by himself!” Then the doctor laid the document down and said: “Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that.” “But zis is ze great Christo—” “I don’t care who it is! It’s the worst writing I ever saw. Now you mustn’t think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out!—and if you haven’t, drive on!”1 In typical Twain fashion, he later demurs, “That joke was lost on the foreigner— guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.” Yet the “joke” only works for a reader precisely because the tourists are playing (intentionally, appar- ently) into a type while riling up the local. But in another sense, Twain’s closing comment could be seen ironically the condescension involved in making one’s guide the butt of a joke is exactly why non-Americans are easily frustrated and confounded by American tourists.