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. Russo argues that life in the United States can be better understood if it is examined from either a wider perspective-the English speaking world, the Western Hemisphere, Western Civilization-or a narrower perspective-regional and local variations. Even when the Americans were innovative-in their multi-ethnic and multi-racial society, in their egalitarian...

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. This gold mine of information and commentary is often overlooked by today's scholars. Russo's book puts us in touch with the historical consciousness of the American people and the once-paramount concern for the particular, the concrete, and the familiar.

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. All communities, including local ones, are amoeba-like, changing size and shape as we observe and probe them. Historians can improve the way they generalize about the past by tailoring their conclusions to the actual evidence they use. By using an array of historical questions of interest to scholars in all of the humanistically oriented disciplines, historians can offer more profound...