Author(s): Jared Yates Sexton

Modern Thought

In recent years, Americans have faced a deluge of horrifying developments in politics and culture- stolen elections, fascist rallies, families torn apart and locked away. A common refrain erupts at each new atrocity- This isn't who we are.

In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations. Working through each era of American growth and change, Sexton weaves together the origins and perpetuation of these narratives still in the public memory, and the acts we have chosen to forget.

Stirring, deeply researched, and disturbingly familiar, American Rule is a call to examine our own misconceptions of what it means, and has always meant, to be an American.