A Joint Preface

Extract

All nation-states are creations of physical topography, historical circumstance, political claims, and cultural imagination. A country's identity may be the result of its material place, legal self-understanding, and (invented) national traditions, but it is also defined by certain founding myths and historical associations born of dreams and distance. The histories of the United States, Liberia, and Israel are obvious examples, in that their territories have become mythic “landscapes of memory” in their own right for many around the world, even among those who have never been there.