After the Fall.

"When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he was struck by Americans' conviction that 'they are the only religious, enlightened, and free people,' and 'form a species apart from the rest of the human race.' Yet American independence was proclaimed by men anxious to demonstrate 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.'...[I]t is our task to insist that the study of [American] history should transcend boundaries rather than reinforcing or reproducing them." Eric Foner, in a wide-ranging 2003 essay recently posted on HNN, contemplates the direction of American history after 9/11.