Greg Grandin

*WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION*
From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a 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

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Documents an early nineteenth-century event that inspired Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno," tracing the cultural, economic, and religious clash that occurred aboard a distressed Spanish ship of West African pirates. One morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, Captain Amasa Delano, a New England seal hunter, climbed aboard a distressed Spanish ship carrying scores of West Africans who appeared to be slaves. They weren't. Having...