Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreword to the first edition/ by Robert N. Bellah -- Foreword to the second edition / by Molefi Kete Asante -- The great American myths and a different American future -- The myth of the chosen nation : the colonial period -- The myth of nature's nation : the revolutionary period -- The myth of the Christian nation : the early national period -- The myth of the millennial nation : the early national period -- The mythic dimensions of American capitalism : the gilded age -- The myth of the innocent nation : the twentieth and twenty-first centuries -- Conclusion.

"In the first edition of Myths America Lives By, Hughes identified the five key myths that lie at the heart of the American experience--the myths of the Chosen Nation, of Nature's Nation, of the Christian Nation, of the Millennial Nation, and of the Innocent Nation. Drawing on a range of dissenting voices, Hughes shows that by canonizing these seemingly harmless myths of national identity as absolute truths, America risks undermining the sweepingly egalitarian promise of the Declaration of Independence. Hughes demonstrates that Americans must rethink these myths in the spirit of extraordinary humility if the United States is to fulfill its true promise as a nation. Hughes locates the roots of each myth in a different period of America's development, and from each of these periods he finds stirring critiques offered by marginalized commentators--especially African Americans and Native Americans--who question the predominant myth of their age. This is a dialog between the mainstream mythmakers and the many critics--including Martin Luther King Jr., Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Black Elk, Anna J. Cooper, and Booker T. Washington, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and W.E.B. DuBois--whose dissent, rather than being un-American, was often grounded in a patriotic belief in the "self-evident" equality of America's fundamental creed. The second edition of Myths America Lives By continues to investigate how the myth of white supremacy has intersected and continues to intersect with foundational American myths with an entirely new introduction and updates to each myth"-- Provided by publisher.