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Not sure how this relates to how exceptionalism is used now, but I have been thinking about the United States as exceptional in the context of the book "The Great Frontier" by Walter Prescott Webb. First published in 1951, it predicts some of the challenges the US will face as the "Great Frontier" closes, and the vast wealth of the US starts to constrict. It really helps put some of the challenges we face into a historical context.

America is a special nation- the most remarkable thing to happen to human civilization in recorded history. Our wealth and spirit have re-energized almost every civilization on the planet. But the factors that drove that are changing, so the future is unclear.

Synopsis of the "The Great Frontier"--

First published in 1951, "The Great Frontier" has become one of the undisputed classics of Western history, its conclusions still hotly debated by scholars but nonetheless essential and engrossing reading for anyone who wishes to understand the history and significance of this vast and often puzzling region.
The final work of pioneer Western historian Walter Prescott Webb, "The Great Frontier" represents a daring attempt to interpret the settlement of the American West in the global context of the expansion of European civilization between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. According to Webb's "boom hypothesis," the expansion of Europe's "Great Frontier" into the Western Hemisphere energized a static society and made possible the development of such fundamental institutions of the modern era as individualism, capitalism, and political democracy. Webb contends that the closing of the global frontier at the end of the nineteenth century, with the end of easily available empty land and readily exploited natural resources, was responsible for the crises and violence of the twentieth century and boded ill for the future of the United States's treasured democracy.