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A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History
A provocative new book that shows us why we must put American history firmly in a global context--from 1492 to today
Americans like to tell their country's story as if the United States were naturally autonomous and self-sufficient, with characters, ideas, and situations unique to itself. Thomas Bender asks us to rethink this "exceptionalism" and to reconsider the conventional narrative. He proposes that America has grappled with circumstances, doctrines, new developments, and events that other nations, too, have faced, and that we can only benefit from recognizing this.
Bender's exciting argument begins with the discovery of the Americas at a time when peoples everywhere first felt the transforming effects of oceanic travel and trade. He then reconsiders our founding Revolution, occurring in an age of rebellion on many continents; the Civil War, happening when many countries were redefining their core beliefs about the nature of freedom and the meaning of nationhood; and the later imperialism that pitted the United States against Germany, Spain, France, and England. Industrialism and urbanization, laissez-faire economics, capitalism and socialism, and new technologies are other factors that Bender views in the light of global developments.
A Nation Among Nations is a passionate, persuasive book that makes clear what damage is done when we let the old view of America alone in the world falsify our history. Bender boldly challenges us to think beyond our borders.
Americans like to tell their country's story as if the United States were naturally autonomous and self-sufficient, with characters, ideas, and situations unique to itself. Thomas Bender asks us to rethink this "exceptionalism" and to reconsider the conventional narrative. He proposes that America has grappled with circumstances, doctrines, new developments, and events that other nations, too, have faced, and that we can only benefit from recognizing this.
Bender's exciting argument begins with the discovery of the Americas at a time when peoples everywhere first felt the transforming effects of oceanic travel and trade. He then reconsiders our founding Revolution, occurring in an age of rebellion on many continents; the Civil War, happening when many countries were redefining their core beliefs about the nature of freedom and the meaning of nationhood; and the later imperialism that pitted the United States against Germany, Spain, France, and England. Industrialism and urbanization, laissez-faire economics, capitalism and socialism, and new technologies are other factors that Bender views in the light of global developments.
A Nation Among Nations is a passionate, persuasive book that makes clear what damage is done when we let the old view of America alone in the world falsify our history. Bender boldly challenges us to think beyond our borders.
384 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 18, 2015
This is an interesting book that I'm not quite sure what to do with intellectually or pedagogically. Bender tries to reframe American history in a more global context in order to get away from distorting exceptionalist narratives. There is great value in his idea that the nation has dominated He argues that American history needs to be blended into and taught as a part of world history, which is certainly easier said than done. I'd be very interested to read his syllabi or see how he teaches his courses. The biggest problem I anticipate is that learning history this way requires a pretty solid understanding of what is going on in these individual, interconnected nations. I could see this approach working well in college, but I wouldn't know how to teach it to high schoolers. I personally like the idea of teaching world history in high school as a few very in-depth examinations of a few parts of the world, rather than an attempt to either understand big, impersonal processes (like this book does) or try to cover every society at the surface level (as many high school teachers do).
Still, I must say that his reframing of American history works in a lot of interesting ways. Here's a short list of the different aspects of American history that are significantly different in this telling: exploration, slavery, the plantation, movement across the Atlantic, the American Revolution and its "contagion," the idea of peripheral rebellions against imperial cores in the late 18th century, Indian retreat/dislocation post 1763/83, early Republic foreign policy and domestic politics, nationalism, homogeneity, and civil wars, centralization, nationalism, and liberalism in the mid-19th century, the Civil War and resistance to centralization, the transition from confederated unions to consolidated nations, free labor ideology, the West as imperialism, racial superiority doctrines, industrialization and urbanization, the critique of unregulated capitalism, the fusion of economics, social issues, and politics, expanded notions of rights and freedoms, and a new view of personal responsibility. I assume that Bender stops his book in the early 20th Century because it becomes much easier at that point to envision American history as global.
Bender tries as hard as he can to avoid the "Why the West Rose" question to his detriment. His integration of American history to global history are mostly integrations into European and South American history, as the Middle East, Africa, and most of Asia are left out after Chapter 1. There's no inherent problem with this, but he does seem to be avoiding the question as to why some societies histories line up in such interesting ways with the US and others don't. I would have liked to see him address this.
As one of my professors put it to me, this is a thought-provoking book that is short on practical advice on how to think about or teach history differently. My best guess would be that a more thematic approach to history is what Bender wants. For example, his first chapter reconfigures the settlement of the British American colonies as one corner of a broader process of discovering the oceanic world and Europeans using that world to gain territory, resources, and power. I think it would be really hard and time consuming to teach both the detailed history of this settlement and the bigger picture. If Bender can do that in a single course, I'm impressed. I think it is more likely that he is building on and simultaneously criticizing the groundwork laid by other teachers teaching more the conventional national narratives that are the building blocks to global history.
Still, I must say that his reframing of American history works in a lot of interesting ways. Here's a short list of the different aspects of American history that are significantly different in this telling: exploration, slavery, the plantation, movement across the Atlantic, the American Revolution and its "contagion," the idea of peripheral rebellions against imperial cores in the late 18th century, Indian retreat/dislocation post 1763/83, early Republic foreign policy and domestic politics, nationalism, homogeneity, and civil wars, centralization, nationalism, and liberalism in the mid-19th century, the Civil War and resistance to centralization, the transition from confederated unions to consolidated nations, free labor ideology, the West as imperialism, racial superiority doctrines, industrialization and urbanization, the critique of unregulated capitalism, the fusion of economics, social issues, and politics, expanded notions of rights and freedoms, and a new view of personal responsibility. I assume that Bender stops his book in the early 20th Century because it becomes much easier at that point to envision American history as global.
Bender tries as hard as he can to avoid the "Why the West Rose" question to his detriment. His integration of American history to global history are mostly integrations into European and South American history, as the Middle East, Africa, and most of Asia are left out after Chapter 1. There's no inherent problem with this, but he does seem to be avoiding the question as to why some societies histories line up in such interesting ways with the US and others don't. I would have liked to see him address this.
As one of my professors put it to me, this is a thought-provoking book that is short on practical advice on how to think about or teach history differently. My best guess would be that a more thematic approach to history is what Bender wants. For example, his first chapter reconfigures the settlement of the British American colonies as one corner of a broader process of discovering the oceanic world and Europeans using that world to gain territory, resources, and power. I think it would be really hard and time consuming to teach both the detailed history of this settlement and the bigger picture. If Bender can do that in a single course, I'm impressed. I think it is more likely that he is building on and simultaneously criticizing the groundwork laid by other teachers teaching more the conventional national narratives that are the building blocks to global history.
November 18, 2025
Bender expands on the argument that American history can only be understood through the lens of Global History. With side arguments stating that the United States is illustrated as being founded on the justification of extending the blessings of Liberty, Protestant Christianity, and improving the world. When in fact, the American paradox or American hypocrisy between “freedom” and the inequality they enforce on individuals they categorize as “other”.
Exciting read! It was a quick read! Given its focus on American history, I skimmed the majority of the context and concentrated mostly on the author's specific argument. A very unique argument! I knew that perspective matters when it came to history (seeing it from an immigrant's perspective, a woman's perspective, or a black American perspective), but I never thought about analyzing from the perspective of an outsider looking in. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the mentions of unintended consequences, such as the Haitian Revolution, resulting in increased slave trade in Louisiana. Very simple and obvious arguments that I never put together. That could just be me being stupid, though; that is always a possibility.
Yes, I read this in one day. No, I do not want to discuss why I read it in one day.
Exciting read! It was a quick read! Given its focus on American history, I skimmed the majority of the context and concentrated mostly on the author's specific argument. A very unique argument! I knew that perspective matters when it came to history (seeing it from an immigrant's perspective, a woman's perspective, or a black American perspective), but I never thought about analyzing from the perspective of an outsider looking in. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the mentions of unintended consequences, such as the Haitian Revolution, resulting in increased slave trade in Louisiana. Very simple and obvious arguments that I never put together. That could just be me being stupid, though; that is always a possibility.
Yes, I read this in one day. No, I do not want to discuss why I read it in one day.
November 18, 2025
I will admit that I skipped over a lot of the contextual pieces in this book for time sake; however, I found this argument to be thought provoking pedagogically. Since I am becoming a history teacher, bringing global views into US History or US history into world, may be an interesting means of connection. I am interested to hear what my peers think tonight in class!
April 19, 2014
One might expect "A Nation Among Nations" to serve as American history with global overtones, but it would be more accurate to call it a global history that includes America. What interests Bender is the global context for iconic events in U.S. history, like the American Revolution or the Civil War. Historians, Bender argues, have constructed an exceptionalist narrative for American history that leads to attitudes that are both parochial and arrogant. US history has always been tied up in the rest of the world. The events that precipitated our revolution, for example, should properly be seen as one episode in a global fiscal crisis. States around the world were dealing with “increasing military expenditures due to greater global integration;” this was a phenomenon that caused moments of crisis in the Ottoman, French, Spanish, and of course the British empires in the eighteenth century. The American Revolution was a particularly successful moment of crisis (for Americans), but clearly the British colonists were not the only people dealing with these issues. Additionally, violence over constitutional issues was bound to flare up somewhere in the British Empire, the thirteen colonies just happened to be first. Similarly, the Civil War can be seen as one episode in a worldwide mid-nineteenth century movement toward “state centralization and…consolidation” in which states sometimes resorted to a “violent process of nation-making.” There were progressive currents all over the Atlantic world at the time of the progressive movement in the USA. And of course, American expansion into the Caribbean and Pacific happened as other nations were also consolidating their overseas empires.
Bender's book is a clear call for change. The world today, he writes, demands that historians adopt “a more cosmopolitan vision.” The United States is connected in complex interdependency with all the other states of the world, and it is about time that we composed histories that helped us understand and engage with this reality. I agree. The whole American exceptionalist narrative has never made much sense to me.
Bender's book is a clear call for change. The world today, he writes, demands that historians adopt “a more cosmopolitan vision.” The United States is connected in complex interdependency with all the other states of the world, and it is about time that we composed histories that helped us understand and engage with this reality. I agree. The whole American exceptionalist narrative has never made much sense to me.
Read
June 8, 2020This is sort of a joint review for A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History by Thomas Bender and The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation by Michael Medved. The reason for this is I kind of read them together. I thought it would be interesting to compare this book by a credentialed historian that argues that the United States is less "exceptional," less unique that is often claimed with one by a right-wing nut job that argues that the U.S. is more praiseworthy than its many critics would have you believe.
Both books are historically focused and I feel like I learned a lot from both of them. But in the end, I'm going to declare Mr. Right-Wing Nut Job the winner. Both had their strengths and their flaws, but Medved's book annoyed me less. This may in fact be due to the post-grad school hangover I've been nursing for a good three and a half years now that means I have very little patience for the excesses of academics with a vaguely left-wing agenda and their popular trickle-down these days.
But this doesn't mean I've become politically "conservative" by the standard definition in contemporary U.S. terms. I know this because I was annoyed by some of the moves Medved made, too. Frankly, I was a bit embarrassed by even reading his book. I mean, my usual take on books marketed to the American political right has been that they are written by ideologues who are totally willing to stick their head in the sand when necessary rather than concede any points to their ideological opponents. Really I think it was my memories of Medved's stint on Sneak Previews, a PBS version of the Siskel and Ebert film review show that also featured Jeffry Lyons that made me more willing to read Medved's work. I used to like watching that show when I was like thirteen or fourteen. Frankly, I didn't know he was anything else but a film critic until I started seeing books with American flag lettering for their titles with his name as the author.
Turns out he makes some good points, actually. Really the most valuable chapters for me were the first two, where he addresses 1) the interaction between the European colonists and the native peoples of what is now the United States and 2) slavery in the U.S. Really his purposes are to put both those "black marks" on U.S. history in a little bit of context and temper the extremist perspectives on both of those issues that are becoming more mainstream despite not really being supported by the historical record.
Regarding point one, he mostly he wants to debunk the idea that Native American were a some kind of Utopian, Tolkien elf-type civilization that lived harmoniously and sang Kumbaya around the magic mother tree every night after riding their giant pterodactyls. . . until they were mercilessly and systematically rounded up, raped, and butchered by greedy, racist Europeans. A few significant details: the indigenous tribes of the U.S., like most societies (certainly the Europeans), were almost constantly at war with each other, competed for territory, etc.; and "new" (to them) diseases killed the vast majority of Native Americans, not white settlers. More broadly speaking, Medved tries to contextualize the interaction between the two cultures in the long history of such meetings where one culture had a significant upper hand technologically speaking (not to mention those diseases! . . .). Not a genocide, he emphatically asserts, and if the definition of genocide is a conscious, organized effort to eradicate a culture then he is right. If real genocide had been attempted, it sadly might not have taken so long. . .
His point two is mostly just an effort to do the same thing with slavery--put it into a broader historical context and debunk the idea that some Europeans seem to have that Americans are somehow uniquely racist. (Hello? Where do you think these Euro-Americans came from in the first place?) The reality is that slavery was much less prevalent and much less cruel in the U.S. than it was in many other parts of the Americas and the abolition of slavery in the U.S. was part of a broader transatlantic abolitionist movement that had the U.K. abolishing their slave trade in 1833 and Brazil outlawing slavery in 1888.
I do not mean to minimize or make light of these tragic and sad episodes from American history, just trying to summarize Medved's very apt correction of some exaggerated notions that have become common in the wake historical revisionism.
But Medved's efforts to advocate for big business and unfettered capitalism are less well-received by this reader. He writes as if business owners have never, ever done anything to take advantage of their workers. He seems to operate under the maxim that ANY government regulation on business is wrong. Tellingly, his book was authored before the 2008 economic collapse. I'd be interested to hear his take on that. But not that interested.
That said, I appreciated Medved's earlier chapters and his overall aim and dispelling exaggerated notions of the guilt some think Americans should feel about their horrible history. He argues that the U.S.'s contribution to the world has been, all things accounted for, clearly positive. And I think he's right.
Bender is also interested in dispelling exaggerated notions. But instead of writing in response to the hypercritical voices on the left, Bender seems to be in a conversation with 1950s grade school history text books that present the United States as unique and exceptionally virtuous, a lone light illuminating the world. He seeks a perspective on the nation in the broader context of world history.
Like Medved, the earlier chapter present excellent information and real perspective before he goes off track in later chapters and falls into promoting a politically-biased agenda. At least that is how I read it.
His first chapters treat 1) the colonization of what is now the U.S. in the context of the age of oceanic exploration, 2) the Revolutionary War in the context of the ongoing conflict between England and France and the series of worldwide revolutions that sought to create democratic governments inspired by Locke's liberalism philosophy, and 3) the Civil War in the context of the rising tide of liberal Nationalism. I'm not going to pretend I understood every last point Bender makes. I'm a bit under-schooled in political science. But by and large he presented what was a nice fresh view of U.S. and world history for me. It seems he sometimes admitted real American contributions to the world begrudgingly (e.g. The U.S. was both early and relatively advanced in its Lockean revolution and inspired many other nations to follow suit.), which seemed a little silly, but at least he didn't totally ignore them.
In the fourth chapter, however, he went off the rails. Even though his premise was talking about the U.S. as "a nation among nations," debunking naive notions of American exceptionalism, Bender seems totally cool with arguing that the U.S. is exceptional in BAD ways. For me this chapter was revealing about his agenda. He uses a clunky metaphor based on a narrow reading of Moby Dick that has crazed Captain Ahab representing the United States, bent on world domination. No, Bender argues, the U.S. doesn't want to conquer the world in a military sense, it wants to conquer the world in an ideological sense--mostly to open up markets for its capitalist aims of selling stuff. But if we have to use our military to do that, then by gosh we will. He goes on and on about the Spanish-American War and acts as if it is the key to understanding the entire history of American foreign policy. Nope. Try again.
If you can't tell, I was really put off by the turn in the chapter. I think what bothered me the most was that he insisted on minimizing any U.S. contributions to the liberty and prosperity of people throughout the world, but seemed totally fine in magnifying what he sees as negative impacts of the U.S. on other nations. Just as Medved's book could have used a little dose of the 2008 financial collapse to inform its discussion of U.S. economic history, so could have Bender's book (published in 2006) been less zeroed-in on the Iraq War (or its historical surrogate the Spanish-American War) as the lone model of the history of U.S. foreign policy.
So all told, for me, both books have much to offer and leave much to be desired. But I kind of enjoyed this experiment and was certainly pleased how well they books seemed to be in conversation with one another.
Both books are historically focused and I feel like I learned a lot from both of them. But in the end, I'm going to declare Mr. Right-Wing Nut Job the winner. Both had their strengths and their flaws, but Medved's book annoyed me less. This may in fact be due to the post-grad school hangover I've been nursing for a good three and a half years now that means I have very little patience for the excesses of academics with a vaguely left-wing agenda and their popular trickle-down these days.
But this doesn't mean I've become politically "conservative" by the standard definition in contemporary U.S. terms. I know this because I was annoyed by some of the moves Medved made, too. Frankly, I was a bit embarrassed by even reading his book. I mean, my usual take on books marketed to the American political right has been that they are written by ideologues who are totally willing to stick their head in the sand when necessary rather than concede any points to their ideological opponents. Really I think it was my memories of Medved's stint on Sneak Previews, a PBS version of the Siskel and Ebert film review show that also featured Jeffry Lyons that made me more willing to read Medved's work. I used to like watching that show when I was like thirteen or fourteen. Frankly, I didn't know he was anything else but a film critic until I started seeing books with American flag lettering for their titles with his name as the author.
Turns out he makes some good points, actually. Really the most valuable chapters for me were the first two, where he addresses 1) the interaction between the European colonists and the native peoples of what is now the United States and 2) slavery in the U.S. Really his purposes are to put both those "black marks" on U.S. history in a little bit of context and temper the extremist perspectives on both of those issues that are becoming more mainstream despite not really being supported by the historical record.
Regarding point one, he mostly he wants to debunk the idea that Native American were a some kind of Utopian, Tolkien elf-type civilization that lived harmoniously and sang Kumbaya around the magic mother tree every night after riding their giant pterodactyls. . . until they were mercilessly and systematically rounded up, raped, and butchered by greedy, racist Europeans. A few significant details: the indigenous tribes of the U.S., like most societies (certainly the Europeans), were almost constantly at war with each other, competed for territory, etc.; and "new" (to them) diseases killed the vast majority of Native Americans, not white settlers. More broadly speaking, Medved tries to contextualize the interaction between the two cultures in the long history of such meetings where one culture had a significant upper hand technologically speaking (not to mention those diseases! . . .). Not a genocide, he emphatically asserts, and if the definition of genocide is a conscious, organized effort to eradicate a culture then he is right. If real genocide had been attempted, it sadly might not have taken so long. . .
His point two is mostly just an effort to do the same thing with slavery--put it into a broader historical context and debunk the idea that some Europeans seem to have that Americans are somehow uniquely racist. (Hello? Where do you think these Euro-Americans came from in the first place?) The reality is that slavery was much less prevalent and much less cruel in the U.S. than it was in many other parts of the Americas and the abolition of slavery in the U.S. was part of a broader transatlantic abolitionist movement that had the U.K. abolishing their slave trade in 1833 and Brazil outlawing slavery in 1888.
I do not mean to minimize or make light of these tragic and sad episodes from American history, just trying to summarize Medved's very apt correction of some exaggerated notions that have become common in the wake historical revisionism.
But Medved's efforts to advocate for big business and unfettered capitalism are less well-received by this reader. He writes as if business owners have never, ever done anything to take advantage of their workers. He seems to operate under the maxim that ANY government regulation on business is wrong. Tellingly, his book was authored before the 2008 economic collapse. I'd be interested to hear his take on that. But not that interested.
That said, I appreciated Medved's earlier chapters and his overall aim and dispelling exaggerated notions of the guilt some think Americans should feel about their horrible history. He argues that the U.S.'s contribution to the world has been, all things accounted for, clearly positive. And I think he's right.
Bender is also interested in dispelling exaggerated notions. But instead of writing in response to the hypercritical voices on the left, Bender seems to be in a conversation with 1950s grade school history text books that present the United States as unique and exceptionally virtuous, a lone light illuminating the world. He seeks a perspective on the nation in the broader context of world history.
Like Medved, the earlier chapter present excellent information and real perspective before he goes off track in later chapters and falls into promoting a politically-biased agenda. At least that is how I read it.
His first chapters treat 1) the colonization of what is now the U.S. in the context of the age of oceanic exploration, 2) the Revolutionary War in the context of the ongoing conflict between England and France and the series of worldwide revolutions that sought to create democratic governments inspired by Locke's liberalism philosophy, and 3) the Civil War in the context of the rising tide of liberal Nationalism. I'm not going to pretend I understood every last point Bender makes. I'm a bit under-schooled in political science. But by and large he presented what was a nice fresh view of U.S. and world history for me. It seems he sometimes admitted real American contributions to the world begrudgingly (e.g. The U.S. was both early and relatively advanced in its Lockean revolution and inspired many other nations to follow suit.), which seemed a little silly, but at least he didn't totally ignore them.
In the fourth chapter, however, he went off the rails. Even though his premise was talking about the U.S. as "a nation among nations," debunking naive notions of American exceptionalism, Bender seems totally cool with arguing that the U.S. is exceptional in BAD ways. For me this chapter was revealing about his agenda. He uses a clunky metaphor based on a narrow reading of Moby Dick that has crazed Captain Ahab representing the United States, bent on world domination. No, Bender argues, the U.S. doesn't want to conquer the world in a military sense, it wants to conquer the world in an ideological sense--mostly to open up markets for its capitalist aims of selling stuff. But if we have to use our military to do that, then by gosh we will. He goes on and on about the Spanish-American War and acts as if it is the key to understanding the entire history of American foreign policy. Nope. Try again.
If you can't tell, I was really put off by the turn in the chapter. I think what bothered me the most was that he insisted on minimizing any U.S. contributions to the liberty and prosperity of people throughout the world, but seemed totally fine in magnifying what he sees as negative impacts of the U.S. on other nations. Just as Medved's book could have used a little dose of the 2008 financial collapse to inform its discussion of U.S. economic history, so could have Bender's book (published in 2006) been less zeroed-in on the Iraq War (or its historical surrogate the Spanish-American War) as the lone model of the history of U.S. foreign policy.
So all told, for me, both books have much to offer and leave much to be desired. But I kind of enjoyed this experiment and was certainly pleased how well they books seemed to be in conversation with one another.
August 12, 2020
This is an amazing work that contextualizes US history as part of world history. Some will find it provocative and affronted by facts and ideas presented, such as when he quotes Henry Adams "the prejudice of race alone blinded the American people to the debt they owed to the desperate courage of five hundred thousand Haytian negroes who would not be enslaved." This was in reference to the Louisiana purchase. The author puts in perspective how America has been affected by other events taking place in the world so one is made aware that American history is not all that exceptional. Unfortunately too many are like the late Antonin Scalia who in his dissent to Roper v. Simmons (2005) complained the "foreigners should not have any role in interpreting the Constitution" while not acknowledging the Constitution was based on 'foreign' opinions and histories. Our (US) teaching of history should be renovated with American history being taught as part of world history. Until that time this book should be utilized beginning in high schools before or in conjunction with current history textbooks.
December 4, 2025
Hey! I just wanted to drop by and say that your story was an incredible read. The way you build emotion and tension feels almost cinematic, like a storyboard that’s already ready to be drawn. It was easy to picture, which says a lot about your writing skill.
I’m a professional comic/webtoon artist, and I couldn’t help but imagine how well your story would work in that format. It’s rare to find something that feels so naturally suited for visual storytelling.
If you'd like to see some of my work or if you’d like to see what your story could look like as a comic, you can reach me on Discord (eve_verse) anytime, and I’d be thrilled to chat about it.
Regards,
Evelyn
I’m a professional comic/webtoon artist, and I couldn’t help but imagine how well your story would work in that format. It’s rare to find something that feels so naturally suited for visual storytelling.
If you'd like to see some of my work or if you’d like to see what your story could look like as a comic, you can reach me on Discord (eve_verse) anytime, and I’d be thrilled to chat about it.
Regards,
Evelyn
March 12, 2018
Gave it five stars because, for a serious history book, it is extremely readable! The author places the US within over arching global themes and shows where we belong within the world. He shows where American exceptionalism is legitimate and the many places where it isn't! We have been a part of the world since 1500 according to his thesis, when he describes the first truly global world as an expansion of the use of the oceans rather than an age of exploration. I'd recommend the book not only to history fans, but to all US, European and World History teachers.
delayed
May 11, 2020Postergado. No es un libro sobre la historia de Estados Unidos y el mundo. Es una historia del mundo en Estados Unidos. Lo cual no le quita nada de valor pero el lector tiene que venir con un conocimiento previo maduro sobre el país antes de embarcarse en este libro. Es muy interesante como perspectiva historiográfica y especialmente interesante por su vinculo con el debate sobre la gran divergencia donde el autor tiene una opinión bastante heterodoxa sobre las causas de la predominancia de Occidente sobre el resto de las civilizaciones durante la modernidad.
September 27, 2021
Some good individual sections. Likely felt like much more of a hot take in 2006. The take-away—"American narratives of nation and empire have been exceptionalist and promoted its difference and separation from other global nations and powers, while in reality it has always been in a transnational and transimperial relationship with them"—is still an important subject for historians. However, the book as a whole is more useful for the non-professional enthusiast.
March 12, 2020
I had to read it for college so why not add it to the book challenge. Some parts did not make any sense at all. Kept changing subjects.
September 7, 2022
Good intro to America in the World history. There won't be too much in here that will be new to people who are familiar with the field, but it's a great place to start\to reference for a summary
November 5, 2022
Propone una nueva forma de ver la historia de U.S. Tiene en cuenta el contexto global y no se cierra en el territorio norteamericano. Es realmente entretenido.
July 9, 2011
This book was required reading for a conference on the Progressive Movement in New York City, hosted by the author. I was excited about both reading the book and attending the conference. Both, however, were huge let-downs. The author is clearly an academic, and he writes like all of the negative stereotypes of one. Unnecessarily long words and sentences, references to topics that are beyond the scope of his book, etc. He goes off on tangents like crazy. Even though this is supposed to be a book about AMERICAN history, through the lens of world events, he spends much more time devoted to world events in some places. Also, the impact that world events had on American events is weakly supported in many places.
November 12, 2007
This book places U.S. history in a global context and contradicts notions of "exceptionalism" created by the more traditional nationalist history one sees of America. It's major fault I think lies in its moralizing. Though his goal is noble, any historian should cringe at the thought of an author attempting to make "good world citizens" out of people - it threatens to replace one group's moralizing with another, and that's a dangerous place to head, no matter what the intention.
May 20, 2012
Bender successfully re-frames American history within a global context in several engaging, thematic historical essays.
A highly rewarding and intellectually sophisticated read; Bender successfully deconstructs the 19th century nationalist "exceptionalist" narrative that dominates US history texts and provides some example here of what a cosmopolitan, globally aware historical treatment of major themes in the American past would look like.
Highly recommended.
A highly rewarding and intellectually sophisticated read; Bender successfully deconstructs the 19th century nationalist "exceptionalist" narrative that dominates US history texts and provides some example here of what a cosmopolitan, globally aware historical treatment of major themes in the American past would look like.
Highly recommended.
May 29, 2010
Excellent reframing of American history as part of global currents. I really like how the author broke down the false duality between "American history" and "world history" because America obviously is part of the world.
March 4, 2008
Really interesting take on rethinking American history.
October 21, 2008
As far as history books go, this one was pretty good. I'd give it a 3.5 if allowed, and I'd suggest it to anyone who really likes reading.
June 12, 2012
This gives a new perspective on America's place in the world. The first and fifth chapters were most interesting. If you read history for fun :( then this is for you.
May 16, 2014
first three chapters are the strongest, but they are very good. esp. #1 that are all really stand along chapters, and well done.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews