Footnote:
Includes bibliographical references and index. - Description based on print version record
Description:
Inspired by the foreign policy entanglements of the early twenty-first century, the author offers a dramatic interpretation of Twain's classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, providing an assessment of American exceptionalism and the place of a global America in the American imaginary. The author asserts that Twain identifies with his protagonist, particularly in his defining use of the spectacle, and thus with an American exceptionalism that uncannily anticipates the George W. Bush administration's normalization of the state of exception and the imperial policy of "preemptive war," unilateral "regime change," and "shock and awe" tactics.