Stephanson explores the origins of Manifest Destiny--the American idea of providential and historical chosenness--and shows how and why it has been invoked over the past three hundred years. He traces the roots of Manifest Destiny from the British settlement of North America and the rise of Puritanism through Woodrow Wilson's efforts to "make the world safe for democracy" and Ronald Reagan's struggle against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union. The result is a remarkable and necessary book about how faith in divinely ordained expansionism has marked the course of American history.