The Myth of American Exceptionalism - Softcover

"This survey is informed by Hodgson's wide learning and powerful sense that Americans are somewhat deluded in their reading of their national experience as exceptional and have allowed that belief to warp their interactions with the world."-Mark Lytle, Bard College

"A brilliant history, from the Puritans to the present, of our belief in our exceptionalism-political, economic, and moral-and how it has lately come to support inequality and hubris."-Walter Nugent, author of Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion

"Some of Hodgson's historical judgments warrant challenge, but this timely and deeply felt, independent-minded polemic offers powerful evidence that a belief in American exceptionalism hinders clear thinking about the nation and world."-Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History

"Godfrey Hodgson has always been a sympathetic and insightful friend of the United States. This is what makes his dismay toward those who use the idea of American innocence to project American power so compelling."-Alan Wolfe, author of The Future of Liberalism

"The idea of ''American exceptionalism, '' once a concept dear to the sectarian Left, long ago evolved into a shibboleth of the Republican Right. Godfrey Hodgson has trained his formidable intelligence against the second of these-and written a provocative exploration of American history as well as American myth."-Sean Wilentz, Princeton University