Earning the Rockies

December 1, 2016
Kaplan, the author of numerous works on global geopolitics, reflects on the geographical foundation of America's international power, which derives from its continental scale and rapid westward expansion. Kaplan revisits the work of historian Bernard DeVoto, who celebrated the frontier and settlement in his 1940s works, while recognizing the cruelties and injustices involved. Moreover, DeVoto, Kaplan maintains, experienced the western landscape more intimately than do contemporary academic and foreign-policy experts, and it is their detachment that Kaplan intends to alleviate here. So, to reacquaint himself and his readers with America's vastness, Kaplan, the son of a truck driver, drove meanderingly across the country in 2015. From the bountiful river valleys of the Midwest to the mountainous and water-starved West, Kaplan describes towns, hinterlands, and local conversations en route to the San Diego naval base, a link between American geography and the greater world. Discovering that people between the Atlantic and Pacific seem split between nationalists with scant interest in foreign affairs and technology-oriented, cosmopolitan types, Kaplan renders an astute, illuminating, and useful analysis of the ongoing complexities of the U.S.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)