The End of the Myth

Greg Grandin is a historian's historian, a brilliant researcher, a captivating writer. It's honestly hard to pick which of his books to feature here. But since The End of the Myth won the Pultizer Prize, I'll choose it as my favorite. What I loved about this book is that it gives me a new perspective about the history of my own country—about which, frankly, I do not know that much—and the region I have reported on for most of my life, Latin America. He makes connections and does so in a compelling fashion.

The book focuses on the United States… show more.

Grandin makes a masterful argument that “frontier” is the defining American obsession, from Manifest Destiny to 21st Century capitalist imperialism. According to Grandin, it is America’s sense of an ever-expanding frontier that guides so much of our decision-making on an individualistic and national scale. His thesis gives clarity to all of the energy and enthusiasm that has gone into the idea of building an impractical, impossible 2,000-mile-long barrier along the U.S. southern border. 

The push outward to new frontiers is ingrained in America’s identity. What happens when there is no longer an outer frontier beyond the US borders to conquer? Gandlin’s book, which explores the meaning of the US frontier from the Revolutionary War to Trump’s Border Wall, leads to an unexpected and deeply disturbing answer. America’s expanding frontier has always been the site of genocidal savagery.  But the savagery was directed outward, providing a “gate of escape” from facing unresolved internal conflicts.

The twin catastrophes of unwinnable wars in the Middle East and the 2008 financial meltdown, Gandlin argues, ended the frontier’s… show more.

This study shows how the concept of an endlessly expanding frontier came to encompass the entire globe. The focus is on American history and the extermination of the native Indian tribes, which extend to external colonized countries. Thus the book is relevant for studying the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as Washington’s policies in East Asia and the Middle East.