From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes the first definitive history of the Western hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both continents.
The story of the United States’ unique sense of itself was forged facing south – no less than Latin America’s was indelibly stamped by the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Professor Greg Grandin reveals how the Americas emerged from constant, turbulent engagement with each other, shedding new light on well-known historical figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar and Woodrow Wilson, as well as lesser-known actors such as the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who almost lost his head in the French Revolution and conspired with Alexander Hamilton to free America from Spain.
America, América traverses half a millennium, from the Spanish Conquest – the greatest mortality event in human history – through the eighteenth-century wars for independence and the Monroe Doctrine, to the coups and revolutions of the twentieth century. This monumental work of scholarship fundamentally changes our understanding of slavery and racism, the rise of universal humanism, and the role of social democracy in staving off extremism. At once comprehensive and accessible, America, América shows how the United States and Latin America together shaped the laws, institutions, and ideals that govern the modern world. Drawing on a vast array of sources, and told with authority and flair, this is a genuinely new history of the New World.
About the Author
Greg Grandin is the author of The End of the Myth, which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Empire of Necessity, which won both the Bancroft and Beveridge Prizes in American history; and Fordlandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and a number of other widely acclaimed books. He is C. Van Woodward Professor of History at Yale University.
Industry Reviews
Praise for Greg Grandin ‘A sweeping and beautifully written book that probes the American myth of boundless expansion and provides a compelling context for thinking about the current political moment.’ Pulitzer Prize committee on The End of the Myth ‘Greg Grandin’s deft penetration into the marrow of the slave industry is compelling, brilliant, and necessary’ Toni Morrison on The Empire of Necessity ‘Grandin writes with literary flair and a sharp eye for the absurdities of politics.’ Washington Post on Kissinger’s Shadow
- Praise for Greg Grandin
A fascinating, insightful book that will transform your understanding of Latin America's crucial role in the rise of the United States and the making of the modern world.
- Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis
Dazzling. Sweeping. Mind-altering. World-changing. This is a once-in-a-generation contribution destined to become our new reference for understanding the making of the modern world. With extraordinary depth, erudition and precision, Grandin avenges the dead and fights for the living.
- Naomi Klein, bestselling author of Doppelganger
In this sweeping and provocative work, Greg Grandin provides a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the intertwined histories of the two Americas, foregrounding Latin American resistance to the hegemony of the United States. This is a compelling new vision of the relationship between the two continents.
- Amitav Ghosh, author of the bestselling Ibis Trilogy and Smoke and Ashes
In America, América, Greg Grandin advances an urgent vision of the relational history of the Western hemisphere. Adding to his already extraordinary corpus of works and reinterpreting five centuries in broad and beautiful strokes, it ends with a chilling conclusion about the diplomatic and moral failures of our current politics and its return to unilateralism and deliberate misunderstandings of the past. A major and desperately needed synthesis of the Americas and the making of modernity.
- Ned Blackhawk, author of National Book Award-winning The Rediscovery of America
America, América is the best kind of book: masterful and erudite yet absolutely riveting. By considering the long, sweeping story of Latin America and the United States in the same frame, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin has given us a novel and necessary understanding of a deeply entwined history that is sure to surprise readers, not least because he shows convincingly and urgently how a different past—and with it a different, better present—might have been possible.
- Ada Ferrer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cuba: An American History
