Horizons of Enchantment

the long version

Lene M. Johannessen's *Horizons of Enchantment* is about the peculiar power and exceptional pull of the imaginary in American culture. Johannessen's subject here is the almost mystical American belief in the promise and potential of the individual, or the reliance on a kind of "modern magic" that can loosely be characterized as a fundamental and unwavering faith in the secular sanctity of the American project of modernity. In both her subject matter and perspective, Johannessen reconfigures and enriches questions of the transnational and exceptional in American studies.