Americans living in France enjoy an honored place in our collective national imagination, from Franklin and Jefferson to James, Fitzgerald, and Johnny Depp. Indeed, it is expatriates’ largely sympathetic portraits of life in la belle France that have helped to perpetuate the pervasive myth of Franco-American friendship.

Oh, how times have changed! With anti-French sentiment still running strong in America more than two years after the tussle over Iraq, it seems that even a few in the expat crowd have caught the Francophobic bug. American journalists Richard Chesnoff and Denis Boyles have both written books that drip with contempt for their adopted country. It makes you wonder why they continue to reside in the land of a 1,000 cheeses – or, from their perspective, the land of 100,000 rude waiters.

Mr. Chesnoff’s “Arrogance of the French” (Sentinel, 208 pages, $23.95) and Mr. Boyles’s “Vile France” (Encounter Books, 162 pages, $23.95) follow similar lines of argument. For them, France is a cunning and cagey political rival that, since the 18th century, has sought to outmaneuver the United States on the world stage. Jealousy, fear, and a finely honed sense of cultural superiority have sustained the French, but these have also led to a profound (and perhaps inevitable) distortion in the way France perceives its hated New World cousin.

While this argument may not be entirely new, both authors approach their subject as true insiders, drawing upon a wealth of anecdotal evidence. Their belly-of-la-bete perspectives lead to numerous illuminating and important insights, such as (in both books) detailed and incisive descriptions of the monolithic and ideologically rigid French press. (The American press, by comparison, looks not only balanced but downright noble.) Unfortunately, some passages come dangerously close to what some might call French bashing.

Why, for example, does Mr. Chesnoff feel compelled to recount numerous personal run-ins with snooty clerks and rude provincial neighbors? Although colorful, these little absurdites de la vie do not tell us anything, as he insists they do, about why the French “dislike us so much.” And by ending “Arrogance of the French” with both a list of French products “to buy or not to buy” and an addendum of highly colorful French phrases that American travelers can employ against “rude French people,” Mr. Chesnoff descends to the level of the absurd himself.

Mr. Boyles, on the other hand, rarely stoops to the cultural cheap shot, veiled or otherwise. He has a much sharper wit than Mr. Chesnoff, which allows him to tread the fine line between responsible – albeit scathing – commentary and churlishness. He also does a slightly better job of distinguishing between France (by which he means the French ruling class) and the French people, to whom he is largely sympathetic.

“It is impossible,” he writes, “to overstate the wickedness of the French elites, starting with the first drop of the guillotine’s blade in 1789 and up to and including their complicity in undermining the Security Council and their sharing in the corruption of the United Nations – and especially in the recent Oil-for-Food scandal. The people who run the place are corrupt in every possible meaning of the word. They disgrace the simple elegance of the nation’s 60 million charming inmates.”

We can forgive Mr. Boyles his minor historical error (the guillotine was first used during the French Revolution in 1792, not 1789); his point here is valid. The French ruling elites have indeed created a self-perpetuating system of money, education, and privilege, through which they have maintained power for centuries. It is the perceived threat from America’s anti-authoritarian traditions of culture and politics that lies at the very root of their undeclared war against us.

To be sure, neither author suffers from the illusion that present-day France poses any real or grave danger to the United States. The inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the modern French state (rampant government corruption, widespread cynicism, and double-digit unemployment, for a start) are apparent to both. And yet, despite all this, these French-bashers seem to find the quality of their vie provincial preferable to that back home. Maybe it’s because the French make good copy.

Mr. Molesky is assistant professor of history at Seton Hall University and co-author (with John J. Miller) of “Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France” (Doubleday).