In the opening pages of Seducing the French (1993), Richard Kuisel notes that Gallic stereotypes of Americans in the post-war era “had been established by 1930. Americans were adolescents, materialists, conformists and puritans. And perhaps racists to boot” (13). As we have seen, such less-than-flattering French images of Americans have a longer lineage and at times reflect legitimate concerns about the potential perils of American cultural and political expansionism. The Cold War heightened, developed, and confirmed, at least in the eyes of some, France's darkest fears about the burgeoning American hegemony. By the end of World War II, the United States had become the most powerful nation in the world and, for a time at least, the only one with the capacity of nuclear destruction. Yet for readers today, whatever their national origins, a willingness to appreciate the legitimacy of French uneasiness might not completely offset the puzzlement at the virulence and exaggeration of their reactions, particularly those generated by the Parisian intellectual elite, which at times seem long on hyperbole and short on sense. Jean-Marie Domenach's comment that “American society is totalitarian; it is possibly the most totalitarian society in the world” is typical (Kuisel, Seducing the French, 116).

Although there was certainly much to critique about l'Amérique in the postwar period, Les Mandarins (1954) stresses French intellectuals’ often Manichean approach to political affiliation (either with the United States or with the Soviet Union; there is no position in between). This has the merit of being a relatively accurate rendering of the dominant Parisian stance at the time. In reading de Beauvoir's novel, it becomes apparent that this simplistic dichotomy is connected to the growing insecurity within the Parisian intellectual community concerning their role and importance in the modern world. This is what gives the title, Les Mandarins, its piquancy.