The Founding Fathers have been hailed for centuries as shining examples of men who put their own agendas aside to found a nation. But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence... America's great forebearers fought with each other as bitterly

"'For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,' John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers...

"The author of American Nations returns to the historical study of a fractured America by examining how a myth of national unity was created and fought over in the nineteenth century--a myth that continues to affect us today. Union tells the story of how the myth of our national origins, identity, and purpose was intentionally created in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and...

"Among the most enduring themes in American history is the idea that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. A pervasive narrative in everything from school textbooks to political commentary, it is central to the way in which many Americans perceive the historical legacy of their nation. Yet, as Steven K. Green shows in this illuminating new book, it is little more than a myth. In Inventing a Christian America, Green, a leading historian...

"This in-depth analysis of the American imperialism debate after the Spanish-American War of 1898 elucidates how Americans understood their international role and national identity during a crucial period of their foreign relations. Transcending the immediate historical context, this book also explores why such debates remain similar and why they end up affirming a belief in American exceptionalism. Obituaries for the idea have frequently been written...

"Jorge Ramos, an Emmy award-winning journalist and Univision's longtime anchorman and widely considered the 'voice of the voiceless' within the Latino community, was forcefully removed from an Iowa press conference in 2015 by then-candidate Donald Trump after trying to ask about his plans on immigration. In this personal manifesto, Ramos sets out to examine what it means to be a Latino immigrant, or just an immigrant, in present-day America. Using...

From maps, monuments, and architectural features to stamps and currency, images of Native Americans have been used again and again on visual expressions of American national identity since before the country's founding. In this in-depth study, Cécile R. Ganteaume argues that these representations are not empty symbols but reflect how official and semi-official government institutions -- from the U.S. Army and the Department of the Treasury to the...