A timely and masterful history of the world's most controversial superpower by popular and distinguished historian Simon Schama. In November 2008 the United States elected a new President. But the collapse of twenty years of Republican conservativism means the country is already conducting an intense self-examination; how it came to find itself in multiple crises and how an America that began as 'the last best hope for mankind' came to be so suspected and vilified. Simon Schama argues that to know what is truly at stake, you need to understand history - for understanding is the condition of hope.