In recent decades it has become fashionable to maintain that the experience of various American ethnic groups - whether African, Indian, or European - is the most significant. In this important social history, the noted scholar Edward Countryman shows, instead, why the very identity of "American"--Forged by all these people - is what matters. This is a scintillating analysis of what becoming American means in historical terms. Edward Countryman offers not one perspective of American history (and thus one identity) but all the perspectives that have contributed to our sense of nationality.