History and 9/11

The contributors to this 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, US foreign policy and Islamic fundamentalism among other topics. With renewed attention to Americans' sense of national identity, they focus on the US 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 A collection of recent and historical documents - speeches, articles and book excerpts - supplement the essays.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 11th 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.