Within this provocative publication, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender functions, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war.

Elevated in Paris with a French mother and Kenyan father, Jouet after that resided in the Bible Belt, Manhattan, and beyond. Sketching motivation from Alexis de Tocqueville, he wields his about Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the Globe and from ONE ANOTHER multicultural sensibility to parse the way the extreme polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has turned into a key aspect of American exceptionalism-an idea widely misinterpreted as American superiority. While exceptionalism was previously a source of strength, it could now spell decrease, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, tradition, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts. They also reveal the interesting ideological progression of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism.

Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of authorities, and Christian fundamentalism are more common in the us than the remaining European world-Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.