Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea [Hardcover]

Richard Kluger (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375413413 | ISBN-13: 978-0375413414 | Publication Date: August 7, 2007 | Edition: First Edition

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning social historian Richard Kluger, Seizing Destiny is a sweeping chronicle of how the vast territory of the United States was assembled to accommodate the aspirations of its people—regardless of who objected. It is a remarkable story of how Americans extended their sovereignty from the Atlantic coastline to the mid-Pacific in the first 125 years of their national existence.

America’s surge to dominion was equally admirable and appalling. The nation’s pioneer generations were, to be sure, blessed with remarkable energy, fortitude, and boundless faith in their own prowess. They were also grasping opportunists, ravenous in their hunger to possess the earth, who justified their often brutal aggression by demeaning the humanity of nonwhites.

These visionary nation-builders proclaimed earnestly, if not innocently, their own rectitude to be the force behind the heroic “taming” of the wilderness and saw in this triumph the hand of Providence. Their good fortune was thus transformed into a mission of continental entitlement—their “manifest destiny,” as they began calling it well after the process was under way. Yet declaring it did not make it so. As we see, luck and their foes’ weaknesses played no less a role.

In a compelling drama, vivid with historical detail, we watch three of the most brilliant Founding Fathers—Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams—outfox British, French, and Spanish diplomats to win more than ample boundaries for their new republic. Finesse, however, had little to do with General Andrew Jackson’s Indian-slaughtering and disdain for the Spanish garrison in capturing Florida. Or with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams’s bluff and bluster in gaining for the nation a northwest passage to the Pacific. Or with how the singleminded James Polk, devious and manipulative, confected a war with Mexico and thereby amassed more land than any other U.S. President.

We learn why the nation’s most famous acquisition, France’s Louisiana Territory, had little to do with Thomas Jefferson’s foresight and everything to do with Napoleon’s failure to subdue black freedom fighters in the jungles of Haiti. Sam Houston tried vainly to prevent the predictably suicidal defense of the Alamo before he could rally rowdy Texans to win their independence. William Seward, in just one week, overcame political disrepute and convinced a hostile Senate to approve his secret deal with Russia to buy seemingly useless Alaska. And Teddy Roosevelt connived with the Panamanians to win land for the canal that so enhanced America’s economic dominance.

Comprehensive and balanced, Seizing Destiny is a stunning reinterpretation of American history, revealing great accomplishments along with the American tendency to confuse success with heaven-sent entitlement.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an admirable and important addition to his distinguished oeuvre, Pulitzer Prize–winner Kluger (Ashes to Ashes, a history of the tobacco wars) focuses on the darker side of America's rapid expansion westward. He begins with European settlement of the so-called New World, explaining that Britain's successful colonization depended not so much on conquest of or friendship with the Indians, but on encouraging emigration. Kluger then fruitfully situates the American Revolution as part of the story of expansion: the Founding Fathers based their bid for independence on assertions about the expanse of American virgin earth and after the war that very land became the new country's main economic resource. The heart of the book, not surprisingly, covers the 19th century, lingering in detail over such well-known episodes as the Louisiana Purchase and William Seward's acquisition of Alaska. The final chapter looks at expansion in the 20th century. Kluger provocatively suggests that, compared with western European powers, the United States engaged in relatively little global colonization, because the closing of the western frontier sated America's expansionist hunger. Each chapter of this long, absorbing book is rewarding as Kluger meets the high standard set by his earlier work. 10 maps. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

In Seizing Destiny, Richard Kluger, author of the Supreme Court study Simple Justice (1977) and Ashes to Ashes (1997), a Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the tobacco industry, takes as his subject America's expansion "from sea to shining sea." Critics are generally positive in their assessment of the book, and applaud Kluger's willingness to deal with the less-heroic details of American expansion. Some, however, question the author's thesis and its execution. That the motives for land acquisition were not as pure as earlier generations were led to believe is now orthodoxy, and Kluger's argument tends to reiterate this once-revisionist history. Still, the author's voluminous research and intricate analysis of the important events are sound, and his presentation is engaging.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 649 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (August 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375413413
• ISBN-13: 978-0375413414
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unvarnished look at American history and expansionism, November 12, 2007

By 

Philip S. Griffey (Bainbridge I. WA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An appetite for acreage, December 18, 2007

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (Hardcover)

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]

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely wonderful read..., October 30, 2007

By 

P. J. Barille "pattibar" (Lake Worth, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea (Hardcover)

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.