Bøger af Greg Grandin

The classic analysis of Latin America's role as proving ground for imperial US strategies and tactics, now in a thoroughly updated and revised edition.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEA new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump's border wall.Ever since this nation's inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States' belief in itself as an exceptional nation - democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America hasa new symbol: the border wall. In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history - from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016. For centuries, he shows, America's constant expansion - fighting wars and opening markets - served as a "gate of escape," helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country's problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home.It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.

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.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the AmazonIn 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford's early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia's eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest. More than a parable of one man's arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford's great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained. Fordlandia is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

In his fascinating new book, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary America - its never-ending wars abroad and political polarisation at home - we have to understand Henry Kissinger.

After decades of bloodshed and political terror, many lament the rise of the left in Latin America. With Guatemala as the case study, this title argues that the Latin American Cold War was a struggle not between political liberalism and Soviet communism but two visions of democracy.

In 1984, indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Mench published a harrowing account of life under a military dictatorship in Guatemala. That autobiographyI, Rigoberta Menchtransformed the study and understanding of modern Guatemalan history and brought its author international renown. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. At that point, she became the target of historians seeking to discredit her testimony and deny US complicity in the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan regime.Told here is the story of an unlettered woman who became the spokesperson for her people and clashed with the intellectual apologists of the world's most powerful nation. What happened to her autobiography speaks volumes about power, perception and race on the world stage. This critical companion to Mench's work will disabuse many readers of the lies that have been told about this courageous individual.

Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. This book deals with this topic.

Suitable for anyone seeking guidance along the highways and byways of our post-9/11 world. This volume features political analysis of topics, including accounts of the two Bush administrations' catastrophic imperial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq; Guantanamo, rendition and its apologists; and Hurricane Katrina, global warming, and black gold.