Overview

This is the third of four volumes in a series acclaimed by both historians and geographers for its breathtaking scope and originality. D. W. Meinig continues his riveting account of America's interwoven history and geography, describing the expanding country's development from the mid-nineteenth century to 1915. To accompany his interpretation of America's geographic evolution, Meinig offers forty superb new maps and forty-five other illustrations. Each original map enhances our historical understanding of the patterns, features, and themes of American history. The book begins with the struggle over where to build the Pacific railway and fix the nation's first transcontinental axis. Meinig portrays in detail the settlement of the diverse regions of the American West and how these many ""Wests"" were incorporated into the growing nation. He then examines the South as an imperial province and the dominance of the American Core over an increasingly consolidated nation. In conclusion, the author considers America's imperial pressures upon Canada and Mexico, the country's overt expansions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the Panama Canal as a transcontinental completion.

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9780300082906

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Reviews

The author of Atlantic America and Continental America gives us another extraordinary book, this one about the impact of the acquisition of a western empire upon the U.S. and how railways 'a space-conquering instrument of revolutionary possibilities' helped to reknit the nation, fractured by Civil War, back together again...In characteristically powerful prose, Meinig offers a major retelling of the nation's emergence to world power. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The doyen of North American historical geography, Meinig offers a distinctive interpretation that depends much on his literary skill, spatial imagination, and flair for profound simplification...[His] arguments are sustained by [numerous] maps and...illustrations, which act as didactic devices for Meinig's insightful analysis. Choice

Author Information

D.W. Meinig is Maxwell Research Professor of Geography at Syracuse University and the author of Atlantic America, vol. 1 (ISBN 0 300 03882 8 pb. #20.00) and Continental America, vol. 2 (ISBN 0 300 06290 7 pb. #16.00) of The Shaping of America series.

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