Introduction: The Peculiar Tale of American Exceptionalism -- The Puritans and American Chosenness -- Looking Back, Looking Forward: Remembering the Revolution -- Cultural Nationalism and the Origins of American Exceptionalism -- Lyman Beecher, Personal Identity, and the Christian Republic -- Women and Exceptionalism: The Self-Made Woman and the Power of Catharine Beecher -- Race, Anglo-Saxonism, and Manifest Destiny -- In the Hands of an Angry God: The Antislavery Jeremiad and the Origins of the Christian Nation -- Fin de Siècle Challenges: The Frontier, Labor, and American Imperialism -- Two Isms: Americanism and Socialism -- The Dream and the Century: The Liberal Exceptionalism of the New Deal State, 1930s-1960s -- The Newly Chosen Nation: Exceptionalism from Reagan to Trump.