The Course of Empire (American Heritage Library) [Paperback]

Bernard DeVoto (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 1989

The third volume of a monumental trilogy of the West by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard De Vito is a dramatic story of three hundred years of exploration in North America. "A permanent contribution to history."--Kirkus Reviews.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Until his death in 1955, critic Bernard DeVoto explored a conception of the American character rooted in the experience of westward expansion. Unlike those who championed the civilizing graces of the agrarian frontier, DeVoto drew inspiration from the mercenary, imperial designs of the fur trade. The Course of Empire, the most elaborate of his chronicles of mountain men and their impact on U.S. history, meticulously accounts for every major Euro-American expedition and enterprise west of the Alleghenies from the 1520s through the 1830s.

In exploiting the West's resources, trappers, priests and explorers had to find new ways of navigating, mapping, and staking territorial claims. Eventually they made alliances amongst some of the native inhabitants and war upon hostiles and interlopers in order to protect their nation's trade routes. This unique political economy, according to DeVoto, ultimately shaped the budding republic's belief that it was destined to rule the continent. By emphasizing how indigenous social and environmental factors effected the protocols of conquest, The Course of Empire foreshadowed cultural studies such as Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land and Richard Slotkin's trilogy of books on "the myth of the American frontier." Its linkage of geography to the concept of empire also puts it in dialogue with the histories of William Cronon and Donald Worster. In a field marked by rapid conceptual change, DeVoto's analysis has retained its relevance to the present day. --John M. Anderson --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

DeVoto won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his series on the settling of the American West. The Course of the Empire traces the history of North America over a period of 278 years. Across the Wide Missouri, however, is more narrowly focused, covering specifically the importance of the fur trade of the early 1800s. Both are solid histories for public and academic libraries.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (April 19, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395510147
• ISBN-13: 978-0395510148
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,323,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The culmination of DeVoto's great history trilogy, October 2, 2002

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Course of Empire (Paperback)

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.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The discovery of the West over nearly three centuries, February 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Course of Empire (Paperback)

"We ever held it certain that going towards the sunset we would find what we desired." Thus the Spanish adventurer Cabeza de Vaca crossing New Mexico in 1535, and as Bernard DeVoto observes "in four centuries no one ever said it more fully." This book is more than a history of the American West. It's a history of the West as a driving idea, from the time when the Pacific seemed very, very close to the East Coast - perhaps no more than a mile according to one early mariner, who may in fact have been looking at Delaware Bay or Chesapeake Bay. From this early obscurity DeVoto chronicles how the people who would become Americans came to be aware that the land which they had settled was in fact a continent, and realised that the nation which they were forging must necessarily span it all. The book's dominant emotions are an intense love of the American landscape, and a profound admiration for the American people in all their diversity and energy. Especially the wilderness explorers, and it ends with a superb account of the expedition by the greatest of this heroic line, Lewis and Clark.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite Excellent., December 30, 2003

By 

Michael E. Fitzgerald (Kingwood, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Course of Empire (Paperback)

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.