This book is the result of a discovery made in the midst of conversation about the sudden academic interest in identity politics. We came to realize that we shared a perception, best expressed in the form of an injunction: forget the endless talk of difference, note that everyone is saying the same thing! In other words, the fact that anxiety about culture war is shared is itself evidence of the continuing homogeneity of American life. Our skepticism about the supposedly broken state of the union reflects our backgrounds. As an American anthropologist who has worked on the Middle East and done research on charismatic social movements and a comparative historical sociologist familiar with Northern Ireland and the post-communist world, we are all too familiar with societies genuinely torn by violent disorders. The United States is not such a society.1 However, we seek to go beyond skepticism to offer and account of the manner in which America has come to be held together, and to weigh the positive and negative aspects of that unity.