The author begins with the story of TV personality Glenn Beck speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 2010. Beck says that Americans must rediscover the values that unite us. Woodard writes that this is a common conception—that we must return to our shared values to unite us. People, including intellectuals looking askance at immigration at the turn of the 20th century, have preached this idea.

However, Woodard writes that we’ve been divided since the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth. People from different parts of Europe who brought different cultures with them founded each area of the US. These different regions were competitive with each other in colonial times and thought about leaving the union even after the Revolutionary War. Each region had its own principles, and they were often in contradiction with each other. By the mid-1700s, there were eight distinct regions in the southern and eastern US, and they were quite isolated from each other. Now, there are 11 regional nations that bleed over into Canada and Mexico.

A nation is a group of people with the same culture. Woodard’s book is the account of these 11 nations within the US, Mexico, and Canada.