Behold, America: The Entangled History of "America First" and "the American Dream"

Written by Sarah Churchwell

Narrated by Anne Twomey

A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018

The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for

In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases -- the "American dream" and "America First" -- that once embodied opposing visions for America.

Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Oct 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781549174957

Sarah Churchwell

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby and The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Her literary journalism has appeared widely in newspapers including the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review, and she comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for television and radio, where appearances include Question Time, Newsnight and The Review Show. She has judged many literary prizes, including the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she was a co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer's Award. Her new book, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream, will be published by Bloomsbury in May 2018.

Reviews for Behold, America

[maquina_lectora · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In her enlightening book Behold America, Sarah Churchwell looks into the history of these two phrases and explores how their evolution, both their myths and their truths, had shaped reality in ways that are not yet fully understood. She looks into how did people use these phrases in the past across the U.S., how they emerged, about the same time, a hundred years ago, in 1916, and how they both became part of the American political conversation in different ways, not as ideas but as catchphrases.

The way a phrase evolves and the chains of association that are formed intuitively or unconsciously as one idea, define the political and social realities. It is surprising and instructive to see how these associations explain the situation that the U.S. is now.

In order to fight the danger of resurgence of fascism, you need to know the history. Fascists are masters of political theatre, they feed on peoples’ grievances; they demonize groups of people, and they present themselves as national saviours. They seek to subvert and eliminate liberal institutions. With her book Behold America, Sarah Churchwell remind us of the danger that U.S is facing and presents arguments to fight back against authoritarianism and white nationalist policies.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Churchwell tracks the uses of these phrases to earlier than they’re usually identified (thank you, Google). Her main argument—and it’s probably not worth reading a whole book on this—is that the American dream starts out as a dream of equal opportunity and civic responsibility, rather than a solipsistic dream of personal wealth accumulation. America First, by contrast, pretty much always meant racism and exclusion. A good line: “[Code words like America First] are there to muddy the waters: to keep people from seeing their own faces in the pool.”