Tag: John Winthrop

Long before the revolution, there were two Americas, implicitly at odds. In the US, all history is contemporary history and its rhetoric is integral to the American experiment. Behold, America tells a story of outrageous bombast braided with the most violent arguments about capitalism, democracy and race. The American dream was not to be found, for instance, on the lips of Woodrow Wilson, a great Democrat idealist. By the 1940s, the promises of the American dream were not what they were, if they ever had been. By the second world war, that faltering dream had shrunk to a vague, intermittent corrective within the national conversation whenever the forces of inequality and oligarchy seemed too oppressive to ordinary Americans. The dark history of 'America first' Read more For more than a decade, once the war was over, it seemed as if the visceral side of the American psyche had overwhelmed its softer, more humane and idealistic alter ego. A society made of words had not forgotten the power and consolations of language. Behold, America is an enthralling book, almost a primer for the ferocious dialectic of US politics, inspired by the events of 2015/16. • Behold, America by Sarah Churchwell is published by Bloomsbury (£20).