Tim Borstelmann, Elwood N. and Katherine Thompson Professor of Modern World History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is the author of new book “Just Like Us.”

The book, which was published by Columbia University Press, explores what foreignness has meant across American history.

Americans have long considered themselves a people set apart, but American exceptionalism is built on a set of tacit beliefs about other cultures. From the founding exclusion of indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans to the uneasy welcome of waves of immigrants, from republican disavowals of colonialism to Cold War proclamations of freedom, Americans’ ideas of their differences from others have shaped the modern world—and how Americans have viewed foreigners is deeply revealing of their assumptions about themselves.

In a time of resurgent nativism and xenophobia, “Just Like Us” provides a reflective, urgent examination of how Americans have conceived of foreignness and their own exceptionalism throughout the nation’s history.

His previous books include The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (2012); The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (2001); and Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War (1993).

For more information on his new book, visit the Columbia University Press website.