Book Review

A circle coming to a close, history coming to an end. Such is the language of teleology, developed in the Orbis Terrarum, the known world, for its fantasies about a part as yet unknown, a West as yet undiscovered. Following its discovery, though, settlers of this New World, calling themselves Americans, appropriated the mythical repertoire for their own use and chose to place themselves outside the logic of temporal history that applied to the Old World. One may call it American exceptionalism, but one must never forget its European origins.	1
The book under review here, though, never explores this longer history. It wishes to review the many ways in which American historiography has been idiosyncratic, "America's unusual perspective on the past, both of Europe and of itself," at a moment when this peculiar tradition seems to come to an end. As Daniel T. Rodgers puts it in the opening chapter, a historiographical revolution may be taking place toward a non-exceptionalist history of the United States. A good moment, therefore, or so the contributors to this volume agreed, to look back and take stock.	2
In his lucid essay Rodgers makes two crucial points. Exceptionalism is only one way in which American historiography has been different. It assumes that American history forms an exception to a rule that governs the history of all other people. But at a less exclusive level American historiography has had its characteristic peculiarities in the same way as other national historiographies. If there has been a distinct American way with history, it is worth exploring its inner logic, without necessarily assuming its exceptionalist nature. Yet, exceptionalist or merely distinct, an American historiography exploring national difference "is fated to spend at least as much of its popular historical energy imagining everyone else's history as in writing its own." It is a statement that sets the program for this book.	. . .