But as a story, it leaves too much out, is too present-oriented, and is too obsessed with the outsize personality of the aged and erratic narcissist who is the 47th president of the United States. It is also misleading. Europa’s claim—You’re not the person I always thought you were!—is shaky. The relationship between the New World and the Old has always been fraught, and necessarily so. Americans are, after all, the people who left the Old World, many with stars in our eyes but chips on our shoulders and the cry “good riddance” echoing in our ears. In 1944, we returned—represented by GIs who read comics and chewed gum, were baffled by foreign languages, and ate C-rations that included cheese like yellow wax—to rescue those who had stayed behind.