There’s an old joke about the French: “Yes, it works in practice. But does it work in theory?” One Frenchman to whom this bon mot most emphatically does not apply is Bernard-Henri Lévy. The peripatetic philosopher, author, activist, and filmmaker—known by his initials, B.H.L.—is as likely to be found dodging bullets in a war zone as he is arguing the meaning of life at a Left Bank café.
Following in the “footsteps of Tocqueville” for his 2006 travelogue, American Vertigo, Lévy journeyed the length and breadth of the United States to report on a country that had become, among his confreres in the European chattering class, “a figure of speech, a cliché.” Five years later, as Muammar Qaddafi vowed to put down a popular uprising and “cleanse Libya house by house,” Lévy smuggled himself into the country, meeting with rebel leaders and persuading then French president Nicolas Sarkozy to advocate a NATO military intervention.
