Sexton’s work is a well-informed fly-over. His research offers a big-picture view of leadership, regardless of political affiliation, that repeats and re-repeats patterns of creating and protecting wealth for the American elite at any cost. Greed is not novel, but this book’s ability to convince its populace that their country enacted greed’s opposite is extraordinary. 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..

... like your high school history textbook rewritten by the creators of House of Cards trying to imitate the scope of The Silmarillion.

Readers looking for consolation and a plan for a more just and equitable future will not find it here. 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?'.

A contrarian history of the U.S. dismissing notions of exceptionalism and triumphalism.

Sexton...a professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University, exposes the myth of American exceptionalism in this searing account.