
Nineteenth-century globalization made America exceptional. On the back of European money and immigration, America became an empire with considerable skill at conquest but little experience administering other people's, or its own, affairs, which it preferred to leave to the...

In a mere fifty years, the United States transformed itself from a second-tier country crippled by its effort to abolish the appalling institution of human slavery into a great power unlike any the world had ever seen. The question of how it did this should command our attention...