This book explores the disconnect between political language and political reality in the United States in the post-Great Recession era of social, political, economic and environmental crisis. It argues that this crisis has called into question the ideology of "American exceptionalism," and outlines a more sustainable and democratic alternative.

Eric Cheyfitz is the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell University.

Introduction

1. Disinformation: The End of Ideology

2. Narratives of the Nation

3. The Palimpsest of History: William Apess's Anti-Jeremiad Jeremiad

4. The End of Innocence: Jeremiah Wright's Anti-Jeremiad Jeremiad

5. Barack Obama and the Erasure of Race

6. The Confidence State

7. Melville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade

8. Thinking from a Different Place: What is a Just Society? A Brief Manifesto