In his new book, rock-star French philosophe Bernard-Henri Lévy hits Route 66. With his driver. (...)

(In American Vertigo), he travels the United States "in the footsteps of Tocqueville." The trip was the idea of the Atlantic Monthly, which serialized his observations and hired a young assistant to chauffeur him down the open road because BHL doesn’t drive. ("It’s my infirmity," he apologizes.) (...)

"The trip was under three shadows," BHL explains. "The shadow of the war in Iraq, the shadow of an election, and the shadow of Katrina," although the hurricane hadn’t struck at the time he wrote the book. "The anti-ci-pated shadow of Katrina, as you see. I was in New Orleans four or five months before Katrina, and I more or less foresee what is going to happen." (...)

BHL, 57, is not a man particularly encumbered by modesty.

In New York Magazine (et Wankr).