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Title: The Course of Empire by Bernard DeVoto ISBN: 0-395-92498-7 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Quite Excellent.
Comment: This is a book about the exploration, not the settlement, of North America. As such, it traces the 278 year history of European and American efforts to penetrate and understand the North American continent.
The Course of Empire then is a compendium of various and sometimes quite different national interests. Utilizing a chronological, fill in the blank approach, DeVoto literally fills in the map of North America as viewed, rightly or wrongly, by each succeeding explorer. Chapter by chapter this story unfolds across the entire history of North American exploration. Thus, the reader meets everyone in chronological sequence, starting with Balboa and ending with Lewis and Clark.
Since subsequent explorers often had access to the records of those that preceded them, DeVoto is not only able to fill in the North American map with the contribution of each exploration, he is also able to link each exploration to its fundamental drivers: national intent and economic interest. As a result, he is able to underscore the ebb and flow of New World power as each country's global interests and economic situation changed over time.
For example, Spain's 16th century interest was mostly focused on conquest and plunder. As a result, Spain's more northern explorations, led by De Soto and Coronado, were limited by the lack exploitable civilizations. In contrast, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and Spain's decline as a world power, England's subsequent 17th and 18th century efforts were more driven by land acquisition, sugar and the fur trade. It is easy to see why then that the French and Indian War was fought and why Britain's explorations are so much more consistent and focused on such dramatically different sections of North America.
Of critical interest is how the author weaves the unbelievable scope of this effort into a consistent whole, telling the story of how the geography of North America limited and encouraged continental expansion and ultimately defined the national borders of the United States. This is an excellent work and well worth your time.
Rating: 4
Summary: Scholarly, definitive of North American Exploration
Comment: From the early 1500's up through and culminating with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, DeVoto's genius shines through , leaving no stone unturned for North American exploration. We read about the exploratory efforts of the Spanish, French, English and Americans, all attempting to locate the mythical water passage to the Pacific for commerce and trade.There is much to be learned from "Course of Empire" and the reader will no doubt come away enlightened with a better understanding of North American exploration. The book can also become somewhat exhaustive for some readers, with over 600 pages (including notes). At times the reader is subjected to the international diplomatic chessgames of geopolitical strategies, with the resulting ramifications thereof, between Spain, France, England and the U.S. This can, and somewhat does, act as a brain defoliant, putting the reader into periodic states of sluggishness and fog. Still, a most insightful read of how North America was discovered. An historical classic.
Rating: 5
Summary: The culmination of DeVoto's great history trilogy
Comment: Occasionally, I discover a book that is so great that I just want to grab my friends by the lapel and shout, "You just have to read this!" DeVoto in THE COURSE OF EMPIRES is not only highly informative, he has helped alter the way I view the course of American history and the way I view the geography of the United States. The book is not only informative and vision-altering: it is superbly well written. As a writer, Bernard DeVoto reminds me a great deal of Shelby Foote's historical work on the Civil War. Both DeVoto and Foote are novelists who brought their formidable literary skills to historical subject matter, and who framed their histories as narratives. Also like Foote, DeVoto never allows his narrative to overwhelm the history. At this point, this is my favorite book of all that I have read in 2002.
On one level, the content of this book is displayed by the maps that begin each chapter of the book: a topographical map of North America is shown, with the areas as yet unexplored by Europeans in a gray shade. With each successive chapter, less and less of the map is shrouded in gray. But in a way, this is deceptive, because, in fact, the book is less about the history of the exploration of the US than in illustrating the geographical logic of the landmass currently making up the core of the United States. Or, as DeVoto writes in the Preface, he wants to provide an extended gloss on some paragraphs of Lincoln's Second Address to the Nation (i.e., what today would be called his second State of the Union address). In that Address, Lincoln argues that the geography of the United States makes it impossible for there to exist more than one nation in the region. The notion of secession and the formation of a second nation is repudiated by the land itself, not merely the lack of natural barriers of one area from another, but the way in which the entire region was unbreakably linked together by the extensive river system in the American interior. Lincoln saw that the geography, the river system, made it inevitable that there would be but a single nation. In this way, Lincoln, like no American president since Polk and Jefferson, understood the logic of the land. DeVoto's primary task in his book, far more than recounting the history of the exploration of North America, is the elucidation of the fact that the United States was destined to be a single country, and why this was inevitable.
THE COURSE OF EMPIRE has the best maps I have ever seen in a history book. No matter what part of the book I was reading, it was possible to turn only a few pages away to find a map of the area under discussion. The only exception is near the very end of the book, where a key but cramped map of the Lewis and Clark expedition appears. It was, however, the only time that I had any trouble following one of the maps. Unfortunately, it was during the highpoint of the book: the recounting of Lewis and Clark's discovery of a route from the Missouri to the Columbia River, and the exploration of the region.
Although this is the third book in the trilogy of history books DeVoto wrote on the American West, this is the one that should be read first. Both ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI and YEAR OF DECISION: 1846 will be enriched by having read this one first. I heartily recommend that anyone with any interest in American history read this. For those especially interested in the American West, it is nothing short of essential.
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Title: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto ISBN: 0395924979 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Year of Decision 1846 by Bernard DeVoto, Stephen E. Ambrose ISBN: 0312267940 Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin Pub. Date: 05 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Bernard DeVoto ISBN: 0395859964 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 30 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Mark Twain's America by Bernard Augustine De Voto, M. J. Gallagher, Bernard Devoto, Louis J. Budd ISBN: 0803266073 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Mountain Men by George Laylock ISBN: 1558214542 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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