Nineteenth-century globalization made America exceptional. On the back of European money and immigration, America became an empire with considerable skill at conquest but little experience administering other people's, or its own, affairs, which it preferred to leave to the energies of private enterprise. The nation's resulting state institutions and traditions left America immune to the trends of national development and ever after unable to persuade other peoples to follow its example.
In this concise, argumentative book, Eric Rauchway traces how, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, the world allowed the United States to become unique and the consequent dangers we face to this very day.
"Rauchway's book is right on time and right on target."
Kirkus Reviews
"Provocative . . . Blessed Among Nations combines the same fluid writing style, bold interpretive approach, and ambitious agenda that made the work of mid-twentieth-century historians like Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and C. Vann Woodward so important and so broadly relevant."
