Partanen wants to open Americans' eyes to how much better things can be-to provide the opportunity to live a healthy, safe, economically secure, upwardly mobile life for everyone. As Partanen explains, the Nordic approach allows citizens to enjoy more individual freedom and independence than the American way. She debunks criticism that Nordic countries are socialist "nanny states," revealing instead that it is we Americans who are far more enmeshed in unhealthy dependencies than we realize. In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares and contrasts life in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships-parents and children, men and women, employees and employers, and government and citizens. To understand why life in the United States is so different than that in Finland, Partanen began to look closely at both. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension. At first, she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. She found that navigating the basics of everyday life was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. Moving to America in 2008, Finnish journalist Anu Partanen quickly went from confident, successful professional to wary, self-doubting mess.
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