Two Visions of America

A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Encounter Books, 2019) by Wilfred M. McClay.

Two Visions of America

What is America? If America is a place, then it will have a history like other places. People will do things, those things will have consequences, other people will be pleased or embittered or indifferent, and more things will subsequently be done, ad infinitum. The people and things will be different than in other places, to be sure, so that the history of America will not be transposable with the history of Norway or the history of the Irrawaddy basin. But if America is a place and its people are of and for that place, then “American history” will be just that, the record of things that happened in America, for as long and as far as you care to conceptually stretch the term. Siberians crossing the frozen Bering Strait would thus be entering into the history of America, a history that would also, eventually, have to reach up to include a few latter-day Americans jumping around on the surface of the moon. The Sea of Tranquility would be, in a way, a kind of American province, too.