Why do so many different people with widely dissimilar ideas and customs get along as Americans? In American Beliefs, John McElroy identifies and explains those essential ideas that keep a big country and a diverse people united, tracing them historically from their origins in the earliest experiences of the American colonists. A powerful antidote to decades of concentration on the differences among Americans. A magnificent and timely book. John McElroy picks up where de Tocqueville left off. -Charles Moskos.