No matter how affairs unfold in the world, the United States of America remains one of the key players on the global stage. Their actions, whether someone likes it or not, provoke a lively response from other countries. Some want to adopt the U.S. model, others want to do the exact opposite, and some simply want to learn from their experience. So what is the "American model," since it has attracted such interest for more than a century? What internal and external political factors led America to form exactly as it is? Famous Americanist historian Ivan Kurilla analyzes how the key elements of the American model were formed — democracy, exceptionalism, messianism, and much more; how isolationism gave way to expansionism; how idealism and rationalism coexist. One of the main factors shaping the American model, according to the author, is the eternal search for and opposition to Others — the English colonizers, Native Americans, supporters of slavery, the policies of Tsarist Russia and the USSR, and in recent years, the rise of China and the return of Russia to the international arena.