Americans and All the Rest: Identity and Foreign Policy in U.S. History - Hardcover

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Ivan Kurilla is a historian specializing in U.S.–Russia relations, national identity, and the political use of history. Formerly a professor at Volgograd State University and the European University at St. Petersburg, he has held research and teaching positions at Dartmouth College, George Washington University, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and The Ohio State University. Forced to leave Russia due to his opposition to the war in Ukraine, he now lives in the United States and continues his work in American academia. He is the author of several books, including Battle for the Past: How Politics Rewrites History (Palgrave Macmillan) and Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of Russian–American Relations (Cambridge University Press, with David S. Foglesong and Victoria I. Zhuravleva).

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Ivan Kurilla is a historian specializing in U.S.–Russia relations, national identity, and the political use of history. Formerly a professor at Volgograd State University and the European University at St. Petersburg, he has held research and teaching positions at Dartmouth College, George Washington University, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and The Ohio State University. Forced to leave Russia due to his opposition to the war in Ukraine, he now lives in the United States and continues his work in American academia. He is the author of several books, including Battle for the Past: How Politics Rewrites History (Palgrave Macmillan) and Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of Russian–American Relations (Cambridge University Press, with David S. Foglesong and Victoria I. Zhuravleva).

Americans and All the Rest examines how the United States has repeatedly defined itself through changing “Others” and how that evolving sense of national identity has shaped its conduct abroad. Rather than treating foreign policy as the product of interests or elite doctrine alone, the book traces the feedback loop between who Americans consider part of “We the People” and how they imagine, oppose, reform, or aid those outside that circle. Moving from the Revolution and the early republic through expansion, empire, world wars, the Cold War, and the uncertain post-1991 landscape, the narrative links domestic inclusion/exclusion (race, citizenship, immigration, religion) to external missions, confrontations, and ideals.