History and September 11th

The contributors to this landmark collection set the attacks on the United States in historical perspective. They reject the simplistic notion of an age-old "clash of civilizations" and instead examine the particular histories of American nationalism,anti-Americanism, U.S. foreign policy, and Islamic fundamentalism among other topics. With renewed attention to Americans' sense of national identity, they focus on the United States in relation to the rest of the world. A collection of recent and historical documents-speeches, articles, and book excerpts-supplement the essays. Taken together, the essays and sources in this volume comment on the dangers of seeing the events of September 11 as splitting the nation's history into "before" and "after." They argue eloquently that no useful understanding of the present is possible without an unobstructed view of the past. Author note: Joanne Meyerowitz is Professor of History at Indiana University and editor of The Journal of American History.