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Seizing Destiny: The Relentless Expansion of American Territory (Vintage) | 
| Author: Richard Kluger
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 339511
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 672
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0375712984
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780375712982
ASIN: 0375712984
Publication Date: August 12, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
Less than 100 years after its creation as a fragile republic, the United States more than quadrupled its size, making it the world's third largest nation. No other country or sovereign power had ever grown so big so fast or become so rich and so powerful.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Kluger chronicles this epic achievement in a compelling narrative, celebrating the energy, daring, and statecraft behind America's insatiable land hunger while exploring the moral lapses that accompanied it. Comprehensive and balanced, Seizing Destiny is a revelatory, often surprising reexamination of the nation's breathless expansion, dwelling on both great accomplishments and the American people's tendency to confuse opportunistic success with heaven-sent entitlement that came to be called manifest destiny.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Seize this book for your library February 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Kugler has produced an epic that explains not only the how but the also the why of America's geographical growth. Beginning with colonial times, Kugler describes how the thirteen colonies came to be and how the royal crown apportioned additional lands to them, and how even these apportionments were not without controversy and disputation. This was probably the roughest terrain to cover while reading, but if you make it through, you emerge upon a lush land of dramatic exposition of America's development from a country of 895,000 square miles, located on the Atlantic seaboard to one of over 3.5 million square miles covering territory in the Caribbean, near the arctic, and in the Pacific Occean. Kugler covers in dramatic detail all the various forces - economic, religious, political - that pushed our country's frontiers to its current boundaries. There are fascinating details, like Franklin's initial demand for all of Canada to settle the revolutionary treaty with Britain, fro example.
Kugler's skillful use of dramatic metaphor brings to life what in other hands could be a dry recitation of events. Key players abound, from the well-known like Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, to lesser lights like Robert Livingston, and especially many of the players from France, Britain and other countries. Each chapter on expansion is like a mini-drama with its own cast of characters, and its peculiar forces shaping their motives and actions. Read this book to take a quantum leap in your understanding of how and why this country came to be geographically how it is today.
An appetite for acreage December 19, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The swift spread of the United States across the continent - and beyond - seems almost inevitable from today's perspective. In an incredibly short period, even if measured only from the conclusion of the War for Independence, that nation's borders reached from the Atlantic shores to the Pacific Ocean. Was this continent so empty or the resistance so minimal that only one end would result? Richard Kluger explains how land hunger, glory-seeking Presidents and various international events led to the formation of a great empire. If nothing else is clear from this intense study of expansion, the mantra of "Manifest Destiny" drummed into school children in that nation is clearly misplaced. The massive stretches of US borders were as much due to fortuitous circumstances as to any other cause. But the widespread popular desire to expand was clearly the foundation to encourage taking advantage of those circumstances.
Kluger notes that from the earliest European expansion into North America, land hunger was a strong social and political force. The charters granted aristocrats, "companies" of colonists and others were vague, conflicting and often unrealistically ambitious. When charter provisions declared the western border was "the Southern Sea" [the Pacific Ocean], it set a pattern. Western expansion was considered inevitable by royal decree. Displacing the monarchy only set the authority for western settlement a notch higher. Kluger is selective, if unsubtle, in weaving racist attitudes underlying US continental imperialism. He ignores the indigenous peoples, making almost as little note of them as does the US Constitution - "cited only once in passing". He clearly acknowledges, however, the hypocrisy of whites in making settlements with the Indians, then breaking those when convenient. Slavery was tolerated not only because the "slavocrats" from the South were politically dominant, but also because it was believed blacks "benefitted" from this unsavoury institution. Unlike the Indians, slaves were part of the economy. That role buttressed the political power of the South and national expansion was to be riven by a North versus South dichotomy of far more importance than whether westward expansion needed justification. Reaching the Western Ocean seemed a given. Only how the continent was to be segmented remained to be settled.
Structured around the acquisition of each segment of North America the US had interest in, the chapters explain how the territory was viewed and what transpired to gain it. It's not often pleasant reading as Kluger highlights how devious politicians could be over land. Land was the issue and all other considerations followed. The aim might have been agriculture, transportation or even diplomatic confrontation, but the goal was always territory. So pervasive was that desire, that we must give Kluger an extra touch of credit for not repeating that oft-quoted gibe from a frontier farmer that "I don't want all the land. Just what joins mine!" which succinctly sums a sub-theme of the book. The main theme is that whoever sat in the White House, irrespective of ideology or party affiliation, gaining land was a constant. If any President is given rougher treatment by Kluger than John Tyler best assumes the hairshirt the author drapes. After a careful and complete depiction of the development of Texas as a province of Mexico, including vivid accounts of that nation's domestic politics, Kluger follows the devious manoeuvring Tyler engaged in. Like a later President, provoking a war to gain an end was not beyond Tyler's range of choices.
For all the image of a "land hungry" people Kluger tries to paint for the US, his attention to domestic affairs is granted little ink. He addresses the slave-holding "plantocracy" in scathing terms throughout the pre-Confederacy years, and notes how depressions cut back on land investment. He cannot, of course, discuss the expanding frontier without noting the work of Frederike Jackson Turner. However, he accepts Turner's "land hunger" thesis without reference to the debate over who constituted the frontier population. Expanding the topics covered would have generated a second volume in this study. Other works have addressed them well, and might be considered in conjunction with this one. Given his intention, to show how land hunger was implemented through government action, domestic diplomatic and military, the coverage is greatly satisfying. Add Kluger's vivid style in presenting the wealth of information he conveys, this is a highly readable and useful volume. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
 we should understand the value of ruthless ambition November 19, 2007
4 out of 11 found this review helpful
Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Vintage)
It is hard to fathom the meaning of the reviewer who said of Richard Kruger that "his perspective is that of a disinterested party." Richard Kruger makes a very lucrative living as an intellectual, churning out long works of history on topics of his own choosing. He, more than the average American, is enjoying the lifestyle available to those who live in an affluent, successful society. If he is "disinterested" in how the United States reached the level that affords him his opulent existence, then he has learned very little from his research. Sadly, his real attitude is even worse. He finds distasteful how his country climbed to the top of world civilization, apparently unaware that his own life would be far less happy had things gone a different way. This makes him something of a fool.
One can read the same story, but from a different perspective, in Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation (Knopf, 2006). Kagan also recounts America's "aggressive expansionism, acquisitive materialism, and an overarching ideology of civilization that encouraged and justified both." But he embraces this success story. He sets out to debunk "the pervasive myth of America as isolationist and passive until provoked . . . . This book is an attempt to tell a different story that is more about expansion and ambition, idealistic as well as materialistic, than about isolationist exemplars and cities upon hills." This is a very useful exercise, and I would suggest that Kagan and Kruger be read together. Then the reader should look around the world with a clear eye and understand that the bare-knuckle methods used to build America are still needed to keep it on top. It's a much needed corrective to the notions (held by segments of both right and left) that decadent idealism and altruism form the path to glory.
The problems facing Americans today are not the results of our past victories, but of our present failures. John Ferling, another self-weakening liberal, in his Washington Post review claimed Kruger should have spent more time preaching disapprovingly about "the legacy of America's historic aggressiveness." We can only hope that the legacy holds in the face of rising powers such as China and Iran who exhibit the "lean and hungry" look that has challenged the world in the past. America won its challenges to those rival societies it encountered, and we should all consider ourselves members of a very "interested party" in making sure we continue to win when challenged now and in the future. Few people ever get to enjoy the benefits of living in the lead civilization of their day. Most of humankind always lives in conditions far worse. We should thank the hard work, cunning and ruthless ambition of our forefathers for "seizing destiny" and passing the good times on to us.
An unvarnished look at American history and expansionism November 12, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Don't be put off by the negative and tepid reviews; this is an exceptionally informative and entertaining book. I usually don't care for histories written by novelists (the great Shelby Foote excepted); however, this is a beautifully written account of our country's expansion. The author has the ability to encapsulate events and personalities concisely, deftly and elegantly.
Best of all, his perspective is that of a disinterested party - not the chauvinistic pap that we all had to endure in public school text books. This is not to say that he has written a preachy screed from the Howard Zinn school of victim-history. His assessments are witty and yet balanced. There are no cartoonish heros or villains here, just complex people working for their own ends.
Do yourself a favor and expand the "All editorial reviews". You will find therein not only very favorable comments from Joseph Ellis, David Kennedy, Dan Carter and others, but also a brief snippet from the book.
If you are a jingoistic "super-patriot" of the Lynne Cheney/William Bennett school, beware! This book may let too much light in.
Absolutely wonderful read... October 30, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a most Savory book... I qualify a "Savory" book as one I loved reading, couldn't wait to get back to each night. Also, a book that sent me in ten different directions having peeked my interest to learn more. The book is wonderfully written with clarity and care. I cannot imagine, having read the New York Times Book Review that in the words of the reviewer, I was reading the same book. It would have put me off if Mr. Kluger had not responded with such a gallant answer in the "Letters to the Editor." I loved this book, I have recommended it to others. It would have been wonderful to have read this American History in College through the clear eyes of Richard Kluger. Thank you, P.J.
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