In this critically acclaimed work, Dominique Schnapper offers a learned and concise antidote to contemporary assaults on the nation. Schnapper's arguments on behalf of the modern nation represent at once a learned history of the national ideal, a powerful rejoinder to its contemporary critics, and a masterful essay in the sociological tradition of Ernest Renan, Alexis de Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, and Raymond Aron.

If as Schnapper asserts, the fate of liberal democracy is coterminous with that of the national ideal, then the nation's fate - and the answer to this question - must be of pressing interest to us all. Reflecting deeply on both the nation's past and future, Schnapper places her hopes in what she terms "the community of citizens."