The Insular Dream

This multidisciplinary collection of essays by some of Europe's foremost Americanists deals with the United States as an island nation. America's trade policies, its foreign military ventures, its humor and its literature are all marked by the country's paradoxical desire to withdraw from the wider world beyond its oceans, while yet serving as its exemplar. The essays, covering aspects of legal and political studies, history and literature, probe the intersection between the national and the international. As such they constitute an important contribution to the study of America's self-definition.