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.
