A half century ago, Louis Hartz articulated how extensively U.S. political culture was steeped in Lockian individualism, a contention subsequently echoed, in a more critical vein, by the seminal studies of Robert Bellah and Robert Putnam. However, in terms of nation building, Desmond King challenges the conventional wisdom that discrimination against individuals due to some group identity has been overcome so as to realize a nation that first and foremost celebrates “a formal equality of individual rights” (pp. 6–7). Instead, he contends that “group-based distinctions” (p. 7) have always characterized U.S. nationalism and will continue to do so despite political and theoretical rhetoric to the contrary.

Three key points comprise King's argument. First, the conventional “one-people” nationalism hides the fact that ethnic, national, and racial identities—some chosen and some imposed by the state—have persistently led to group divisions in the United States. Second, these long-standing divisions, which are continually renewed, thwart the complete realization of liberal individualism as the nation's identity. Finally, the ensuing tension between “group-based demands for democratic inclusion” (p. 168) and one-people nationalism has engendered a very strong state that has promulgated public policies, replete with group categories, designed to remedy past discrimination.

In the first half of his text, King reviews public policies and cultural practices since the U.S. Civil War that illustrate how inscribed group divisions have been in the pursuit of national identity: the “civilizing” of Native Americans through so-called Christian schools, the segregation of African Americans both through public policy and Garveyite separatism, the “civilizing” of Filipinos in the Spanish-American War, the restrictions placed on Chinese immigrants through labor laws and Japanese immigrants through World War II internment camps, and even delineations between Northern as opposed to Southern and Eastern European groups. King provides an eye-opening account of how in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a hierarchical categorization of races was part and parcel of the Progressive Movement.

In the second half of the text, King argues that as the United States expands its foreign policy presence in the twentieth century, the contradiction between its purported opposition to imperialism and colonialism and its domestic treatment of marginalized minority groups becomes quite glaring. Woodrow Wilson's “global liberalism” (p. 73), U.S. democratization of Japan post–World War II, and Eleanor Roosevelt's championing of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights are each in tension with the reality of domestic group divisions. The subsequent recourse to remedies, such as affirmative action and revisions of immigration law, he adds, further underscores how intrinsic group categories are to the national psyche. Finally, he accents how domestic cultural groups increasingly lobby Washington on foreign policy issues connected to their native lands. Nevertheless, the myth of individualism, he reiterates, prevents realization of “a genuinely inclusive nationalism appreciative of the country's community of groups” (p. 171).

The strength of King's presentation is his countless examples of group categories in post–Civil War history, and therefore it is a valuable resource for historians and political scientists teaching courses on ethnic, racial, and multicultural relations. However, the author's theoretical contention that the individualist rendering of U.S. nationhood obfuscates how crucial group divisions have been to the construction of national identity is less persuasive, not because the argument lacks merit but because he does not fully substantiate his argument.

First, it is not clear from King's argument how much these group identities are the construction of public policymakers and how much they are the construction of the groups themselves. For instance, he contends: “American Indians paradoxically had to establish their distinct group identity as a basis for inclusion within the boundaries of the American nation” (p. 135). This connection between identity construction and terms of inclusion needs further clarification. In this instance, the link would be challenged by Native American separatists.

Second, King's claim that “the existence of group divisions is far more entrenched” (p. 163) in the United States than elsewhere is contrary to recent scholarship illustrating how intensely group rights are being debated both in Europe and in Canada. He counters he is articulating a “post-multiculturalism” (p. 168), but when one considers how cultural categories are explicitly incorporated into decision-making networks and public policies, for instance in Belgian, Dutch, and German cities (e.g., see Patrick Ireland, Becoming Europe: Immigration, Integration, and the Welfare State, 2004), one has to be a bit skeptical of King's claim, or again further clarification is needed.

In truth, such substantive shortcomings are actually stylistic: Too many of King's valuable ideas remain embedded in his reference notes. For instance, given his focus on group categories, how does his argument compare to Will Kymlicka's important works on multiculturalism that also seek to move beyond an abstract individualism? Although Kymlicka's work never appears in the narrative, King acknowledges it in the endnotes. Similarly, the work of Samuel Huntington, among others, suffers the same fate. Political theorists will find this to be exacting: Almost like a website, King's argument leads to crucial links that readers have to follow on their own to develop the argument. His narrative does not do justice to his extensive research and his provocative ideas.

Beyond this stylistic drawback, the author never engages the growing literature on the fluid intersection of cultures—hybridity, cultural hyphenation, syncretization, and transculturation. He does not sufficiently explore how in the United States, cultural groups are intersecting and transforming not just one another, but also the national identity, without necessarily culminating in assimilation. As much as he makes a valuable contribution by juxtaposing his narrative regarding group categories to the conventional one of individualism, his analysis needs to move beyond the individual-group dichotomy to engage the “border crossings” that are increasingly characterizing personal, cultural, and national identities.

In sum, King's scholarship challenges the hegemony of individualism in the construction of U.S. national identity. In turn, he now needs to subject his vivid articulation of group divisions to the same scrutiny from the stance of the lateral intersection of identities. In so doing, he would genuinely further the vision of “integration of groups” (p. 3) communicated by Lyndon Johnson in his famous 1965 Howard University address with which King begins The Liberty of Strangers.