It is difficult to read without cringing your article about the hefty tome just published jointly by no fewer than three American think-tanks (“Only in America,” April 26, 2008). Even the title of the book, edited by Peter Schuck and James Wilson, is difficult to stomach: Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).  Leaving aside American individualism, voluntarism, patriotism, and religiosity, which Margaret Thatcher once called “Victorian values,” your concluding paragraph about American triumphalism is the most irksome of all. “Winning the cold war left many Americans intoxicated with power,” or so you claim. The Soviet Union did not lose the cold war, though. It imploded and melted away on its own. It fell apart from within because its own people had lost faith in socialism as a historical project. Attributing the calamity to America’s strength or cunning is ludicrous. And taking the credit for it is nothing short of naïve. Come to think of it, naïveté is surely another notable American value, Victorian or otherwise.