"Dominion from Sea to Sea is both original and so well researched that I am in awe of all the work and how all that information has been integrated."—Daniel Chirot, University of Washington
(Daniel Chirot )
"In this sprawling and vastly interesting book, Bruce Cumings reorients American history from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Stressing America''s expansionist thrusts and violent, unilateralist impulses, he illuminates how adventurers and entrepreneurs, state and federal governments, corporations and universities all collaborated to transform the West and revitalize America, especially after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Rarely has a historian so evocatively and insightfully integrated the settlement of America''s frontiers with the history of migration, technology, trade, agriculture, race, the environment, and foreign relations. Dominion from Sea to Sea reshapes and reorients our thinking about our nation''s history; it is a book that must be read and discussed; it inspires pride and shame."—Melvyn P. Leffler, University of Virginia
(Melvyn Leffler )
"In a rich and colorful narrative Cumings sweeps the reader westward across time and space, recounting U.S. history from the perspective of the Pacific, with special attention to California on one side and East Asia on the other. From Jurassic trenches to Silicon Valley, he links the westering of people, technology, capitalism, and lifestyles to both domestic and foreign policy and concludes that whatever has happened to California (and hence to the country), America remains ascendant, even if it doesn''t always know how to go about its global leadership. Agree or disagree, the story is irresistible."—Carol Gluck, Columbia University
(Carol Gluck )
"In this fascinating book, Bruce Cumings, whose scholarly work has focused on East Asia, shows that he can be just as adept and exciting in writing American history. Actually, it is a ''Pacificist'' version of U.S. history. He shows that ''the American story'' can never be fully told unless the Western parts of the United States as well as the Pacific region are incorporated. Describing in colorful detail developments in the Western states, including Texas, as well as the countries of East Asia, the author argues that these developments have been inseparable from the story of U.S. ''dominion from sea to sea,'' or its overwhelming military presence in ''the global archipelago.'' The book fits into an emerging scholarly trend, to transcend narrowly focused national narratives and to deal with larger entities and in large frameworks such as Atlantic history, Europeanization, South Asian cosmopolitanism that have already enriched our understanding of modern global history. Few historians are as capable as Cumings of launching the field of Pacific history, and readers will find in this imaginatively conceived and earnestly but also humorously presented history much that will help them understand how the United States became globalized domestically and internationally, and what the future holds both for the nation and for the world."—Akira Iriye, Harvard University
(Akira Iriye )
"This is nevertheless one of the richest and most thoughtful books of American history I have read in a long time. . . . Cumings’s book is both a timely and splendidly enjoyable read."—Dominic Sandbrook, Literary Review
(Dominic Sandbrook
Literary Review )
“The story of America’s rapid unrolling of the exceptionalist carpet is very well told by Mr. Cumings. . . .[He] writes marvelously. . . .A lively rattlebag of a history of the Pacific slope and how the Pacific Ocean came to be an American Lake.”--Economist
(
Economist )
"Bruce Cumings, in this beautifully written book . . . presents consistently stunning analysis of a mountain of dascinating data."—James I. Matray, American Historical Review
(James I. Matray
American Historical Review )
