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So, you think you are exceptional? Take a number; so does everyone else. Each nation considers itself singular. The Germans stumbled along their Sonderweg during the 19th century, priding themselves on being such fine and unusual fellows until they were finally kicked into the European and global mainstreams after starting and losing two world wars. In their own estimation, the French are like none other, and their revolution still the wellspring of modernity. Those Scandinavians who find themselves abroad return home like swallows every summer. Nine months in the cesspool that is the world south of the Eider is as much as they can bear. And “How odd of God”, William Norman Ewer once mused, “to choose the Jews.”