Spectator Books

Is the "American Dream", as Donald Trump claims, dead? Is “America First” a policy of national pride or a dogwhistle to white supremacists? In this week’s Spectator Books, we take the long view. My guest, Sarah Churchwell, excavates the long histories and surprisingly variable meanings of these two phrases in her new book Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream — and shows how central they have been to the United States’s long argument with itself about the meaning of the nation, and how they continue to be so today.