| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Americanism: New Perspectives on the History of an Ideal. Ed. by Michael Kazin and Joseph A. McCartin. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. viii, 279 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3010-9.)

The subject of Michael Kazin and Joseph A. McCartin's edited volume, Americanism, is both timely and important. "Americanism," the liberal ideology that underpins American nationalism, is a rich and contentious subject, and the book's essays offer uniformly interesting and sometimes novel interpretations of it. Unlike most national identities, America's is not based on an explicit ethnic or religious foundation. Instead, Americans have always claimed an identity founded on a set of ideals, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that transcend the narrow interests or values of any particular group. By invoking the defense of human liberty as its defining attribute, however, the United States exposes itself to critical inquiry into its fidelity to its ideals—by both Americans and non-Americans. The essays therefore study the practical meaning of Americanism not only from the standpoint of the diverse peoples who have been American citizens but also from the perspective of outsiders.

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