Every now and then two books appear that, taken together, amount to something like a conversation. Such is the case with T.R. Reid’s “The United States of Europe” (Penguin, 320 pages, $25.95) and “Free World” by Timothy Garton Ash (Random House, 304 pages, $24.95). Both deal with the growing disconnect between the United States and the states forming a still somewhat less than perfect union across the Atlantic.

Both authors are experienced journalists: Mr. Reid has worked for many years for the Washington Post, including a stint as its London bureau chief; Mr. Garton Ash regularly contributes to such publications as the Guardian and the New York Review of Books. The sense of conversation is further strengthened by their perspectives. Mr. Garton Ash is a Brit, which gives him at least probationary status as a European (more on that later). Mr. Reid is quite clearly the American abroad.

Although both books make worthwhile reading, Mr. Reid’s suffers by comparison. He clearly believes he has stumbled on a major scoop: The increasingly integrated European Union has become or is becoming – he’s not entirely sure – the world’s second superpower. He foolishly presents this notion in a way that suggests that no one in America has noticed either European ambitions or the resulting increased tensions. He also employs a breezy, almost chirpy, style that can get in the way of the reporting: “You zoom smoothly along in quiet comfort, glance at the headlines in Le Monde, sip a perky young Beaujolais, and watch the medieval villages and the handsome rectangular church steeples of rural France race by outside the window. C’est magnifique!”

Mr. Reid obviously enjoyed his stay abroad, and, as someone who has lived five years of his life in Europe, I can sympathize with an enthusiasm for European train travel and French wine, if not Le Monde. What I don’t understand is Mr. Reid’s consistent preference for the European socioeconomic model. In almost every instance – whether it is socialized medicine, unemployment assistance, crime prevention, or drug interdiction – he finds the European way the better way. Even where there are clouds on the horizon – like falling church attendance and skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birthrates – he finds a way to turn the tables against America:

Does it make any difference in daily life whether Europeans still believe in God or go to church? It is hard to argue that twenty-first-century Europe is a less moral or caring society than the church-going United States. Yes, Americans put up huge billboards reading “Love Thy Neighbor,” but they murder and rape their neighbors at rates that would shock any European nation.

Mr. Reid is smart enough, and has read enough earnest newspaper editorials, to always cover his bases, so he does allow that the secularization of Europe “makes it harder to transmit Europe’s cultural tradition.” The children don’t know who’s who in the paintings of the Old Masters, and they can’t identify the saints in the stained-glass windows. But after he checks that box, he makes it clear that Europeans have left the benighted United States in the dust:

The public religiosity that is part and parcel of American life is rarely seen on the continent; the only televangelists on European screens are piped in via cable from Newport News and Houston. Europeans tend to be surprised, or amused, when U.S. politicians end a speech with the words, “God bless America.”

The only real worm in Mr. Reid’s European apple, and the freshest material in the book, concerns the growing tendency of even well-educated Europeans to fall for junk science and technophobic hysteria. They use mobile phones more than Americans, but many are convinced

they will give them cancer. They have rejected genetic hybrids of agricultural products despite all the evidence that they are safe. Beef and pork fed with growth hormones are eaten all over the world, but not in Europe. More ominously, European mothers are increasingly reluctant to vaccinate their children because of junk science linking vaccination to autism. The result has been a resurgence of measles and other childhood diseases.

Still, with all of its faults, Mr. Reid’s book does describe the European view in terms that will be understandable, if unpersuasive, to the average American reader. The differences between Europe and America are not going away soon, and they have political, economic, and military consequences.

Mr. Garton Ash has a much more nuanced view of these differences and a deep understanding of the gulf between the constituent members of what is often called “The European House.” “Does the life of a lawyer in Hamburg more closely resemble that of a lawyer in Kiev or Boston,” he asks. “The answer must surely be Boston.” Exactly right, and, in an instant, Mr. Garton Ash demolishes the idea that simple geography determines cultural and political affinity. He is also quite obviously a deeper thinker than Mr. Reid, and a more careful observer.

Mr. Garton Ash sees the world through the prism of what it means to be free and not free. This is especially interesting because he writes from the center-left and is no fan of the Bush administration. He is unlikely to appear on “Crossfire,” and some of his more salient observations concern Washington’s think-tank, talking-head, political-appointee carrousel and its impact on the quality of U.S. political commentary.

Mr. Garton Ash is more balanced than Mr. Reid in assigning blame for the meltdown between France and the United States over Iraq. Both Jacques Chirac and his former foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, are judged failures, not only for not preventing the Iraq War but for split ting Europe down the middle when their stated goal was to rally Europe around their position. What is often overlooked in the debate on that war is that while Germany and France declined to participate, Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland, and others not only agreed but sent troops.

On the other contested themes, the same pattern holds. Mr. Reid is an enthusiastic admirer of European “soft power” in the form of foreign aid. He cites studies that show Norway devoting 10 times the amount the United States does to foreign aid on a per capita basis. Mr. Garton Ash, however, is careful to note that private philanthropy is a much larger factor in United States giving, citing a study that estimates private giving to foreign causes from the U.S amounts to $100 for even $1 given on the continent.

Mr. Reid says that Europeans are less patriotic than Americans; Mr. Garton Ash cites surveys suggesting that the Irish and Polish are more proud of their countries than Americans. On guns, there can be little doubt of the difference between America and the major European powers, but handguns are widely available and toted in much of Eastern Europe. And while it is tempting to some Europeans and such American leftists as filmmaker Michael Moore to suggest that “cowboys at home will be cowboys abroad,” Mr. Garton Ash points out that from the end of the Vietnam War to September 11, Britain and France were much more likely to send troops into harm’s way than America. (In all of the election-year excitement over Mr. Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911,” it was seldom mentioned that his earlier “Bowling for Columbine” drew a parallel between the shootings at Columbine High School and President Clinton’s bombing of Serbia.)

Most importantly, while Mr. Reid apparently thinks a superpower can manage without a serious military component, Mr. Garton Ash is far less sanguine on that prospect. And although Mr. Garton Ash does acknowledge the problem, neither of these books really addresses the most important strategic problem facing Europe – a birth dearth that threatens to depopulate large areas of the continent coupled with popular resistance to liberal immigration laws.

What are we to make of the conflicts and policy questions raised by these two books? Europe and America have serious differences, but they are manageable in comparison to the gulf that exists between the free and not-free worlds. Globalization means an economic interdependence that trumps almost all political conflicts between free nations.

As for the notion that Europe is going to challenge or even replace the United States as the pre-eminent global power, I am reminded of something a friend told me a long time ago: The only good thing about getting older is that you have seen this film before. Remember when the Soviets with their command economy, the Arabs with their oil, and the Japanese with their manufacturing expertise were all 10 feet tall?

Precisely because America is and will continue to be pre-eminent, she must stand by her principles, explain and defend them as best she can, and, above all, lead.

Mr. Willcox last wrote for these pages about the Cold War in Central America.