American Rule

“If you enjoy writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton’s tweets, you’ll appreciate his new book, American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People. It focuses on the events in history that led us to where we are today—a nation that repeatedly claims ‘this is not who we are’ when this is, actually, how we are.”—Marie Claire, “Best Political Books of 2020”

“Exceptional . . . Think of American Rule as a modern companion to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States—books that, if our public education system was honest with itself, would be required in high school curriculum.”—Big Think

“Jared Yates Sexton unmasks the horrors of the Trump era—and the fictions that have been created to whitewash them—by rooting them in the stories we have told ourselves for two centuries to hide away the white supremacy, violent conquest and subjugation, xenophobia, nativist nationalism, and plutocracy that have periodically darkened our history. A historical strip-mining that’s as brutal as the past it uncovers—and the present political moment it lays bare.”—Greg Sargent, author of An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics

“Coming to terms with the aftermath of Trump’s election in 2016, Jared Yates Sexton, like so many, realized he had been taught a deeply partial version of American history, one that couldn’t explain where the country had suddenly found itself. Impressively researched, vividly written, impassioned, and ambitious, American Rule tells the other side of the story, offering a counter-history that resists received narratives and takes a bold, urgent step toward reframing the histories of America the nation chose to tell itself.”—Sarah Churchwell, author of Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “the American Dream”

“[American Rule] surveys the leaders and policies of American rule from the Founding Fathers to now, laying bare a collective, consistent, centuries-long gaslighting of the American people. . . . Sexton’s writing is to be praised for its lack of equivocation. He calls the immoral immoral, the unethical unethical. The reading is uncomfortable yet necessary. Sexton’s well-executed project of looking at American history with radical candor is meant to make us more patriotic, not less; only with clear eyes do we have a chance of fulfilling America’s promise.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Sexton, a professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University, exposes the myth of American exceptionalism in this searing account. . . . Sexton’s survey of American political history is taut and tart. . . . An unflinching and well-crafted takedown of the nationalist rhetoric that fueled Trump’s rise.”—Publishers Weekly

“Sexton continues to serve as a historical myth buster, tackling the belief of America as a fair and just government of the people, and portraying instead a broken system built by and for white elites. . . . Sexton is effective at drawing parallels between contemporary politics and historic events. . . . Recommended primarily for those concerned by the tone and direction of American politics and seeking a better understanding of the question on which the book is framed: ‘How did we get here?’”—Library Journal

“A ‘chronicle of oppression’ that makes a rousing counter to the usual celebratory narratives of the American past.”—Kirkus Reviews