In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth

Richard Gamble's book, In Search of the City on a Hill: the Making and Unmaking of an American Myth, helps make sense of exceptionalism's evolution. Gamble traces the "city on a hill" metaphor, from Puritan leader John Winthrop, who took it from the gospels, to its reincarnation in the 20th century as an explicitly political idea at the heart of foreign policy debates.