(Hardback)

This study is the first interpretive text for the study of American exceptionalism and the first overall assessment of geographic, political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of the American past written from a global perspective. American society was a Western society with racial castes and multi-ethnic additions to the population.

(Hardback)

Nations and other political entities are inadequate bases for studying the human past, because the other aspects of human life are not organized along the same lines as these political entities.

(Hardback)

Long before Americans were imbued with the sense of a national past, local antiquarians and amateur historians wrote about the people, places, and happenings that were closest to their hearts, creating in the process a historical record of incalculable value.