American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. (book reviews)

Sidney Verba, Harvard University

Like the children of Lake Wobegon, all nations are exceptional, but the United States is more exceptional than most. Foreign visitors from the beginning of the Republic - Tocqueville and many others - found the United States to be different from what they knew in Europe. And that perception of difference has not disappeared. What U.S. academic traveling abroad has not been asked by a bemused foreigner to "explain" the United States? At issue may be something specific, like Watergate or Whitewater; something endemic, like our world-class crime ...

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