Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other
Mugambi Jouet
Nov 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Mirron Willis
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12 hr 48 min
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About this audiobook
In this provocative book, Mugambi Jouet describes why Americans are far more divided than other Westerners over basic issues, including wealth inequality, health care, climate change, evolution, gender roles, abortion, gay rights, sex, gun control, mass incarceration, the death penalty, torture, human rights, and war. Raised in Paris by a French mother and Kenyan father, Jouet then lived in the Bible Belt, Manhattan, and beyond. Drawing inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville, he wields his multicultural sensibility to parse how the intense polarization of U.S. conservatives and liberals has become a key dimension of American exceptionalism-an idea widely misunderstood as American superiority. While exceptionalism once was a source of strength, it may now spell decline, as unique features of U.S. history, politics, law, culture, religion, and race relations foster grave conflicts. They also shed light on the intriguing ideological evolution of American conservatism, which long predated Trumpism. Anti-intellectualism, conspiracy-mongering, a visceral suspicion of government, and Christian fundamentalism are far more common in America than the rest of the Western world-Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
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About the author
An author specialized on the intriguing evolution of American democracy, politics, and culture, Mugambi Jouet teaches at Stanford Law School. His articles have notably been featured in Mother Jones, the New Republic, Slate, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post, the Hill, Liberation, and more.
Prolific audiobook narrator Mirron Willis has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and an Audie Award. An accomplished actor, he has appeared on stage, in films, and on television. His many theater credits include roles in Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Knock Me a Kiss, and A Raisin in the Sun.
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