The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History

Americans love writing books about their history. Whether it is a thousand‐page popular history, a personal memoir or a mammoth biography, the sheer profusion of material is staggering. Robert Caro has written three big volumes on Lyndon Johnson without even reaching his presidency! This might just demonstrate the vitality of American publishing but I think it is also a publisher's homage to the American past.

Part of this homage is the Whiggish idea of progress, borrowed from England – in this case, “How the American Dream was Realised”; but it also acts as a vindication of the Republican model laid...