Read The End of the Myth From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Audible Audio Edition Greg Grandin Eric Pollins Macmillan Audio Books

Product details Audible Audiobook Listening Length 13 hours and 27 minutes Program Type Audiobook Version Unabridged Publisher Macmillan Audio Audible.com Release Date March 5, 2019 Whispersync for Voice Ready Language English, English ASIN B07P5ZR16M

The End of the Myth From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Audible Audio Edition Greg Grandin Eric Pollins Macmillan Audio Books Reviews

• Grandin continues his top notch contributions to understanding the Americas with this excellent work of living history.
  To understand the role that the wall plays in American politics, you have to understand the frontier. From the point of contact, the American mind was created in the psychological expanses of land and the pathological attempts to clear it of its native inhabitants. The frontier created a safety valve for every displaced urge and the vitriol of the colonizers, a valve that has remained in place since.
  Grandin traces all of these steps and I can't do this excellent book justice in a short review, but I can say that this must be read. There is a reckoning that is long overdue in this country about the very nature of "freedom" and what that actually means. As it has been understood and enacted, it is a product of the frontier, of might makes right practices of displacement, exclusionism, and unrepentant expansionism. That is what fueled the white supremacy that underlies our contemporary reality, which is a wound time hasn't healed, but reopened. Because there has been little to no acknowledgement of the racist, colonial realities of America, in both history and in the mind, these things foment into populist distractions. The wall never needed to be built, whether it eventually is or not. It just had to represent the shift in the American mind from the end of the frontier to the constantly redefined and militarized edges of a globalized empire.
  Excellent companion and follow up to Richard Drinnon's classic 'Facing West.'
• A lyrical tour de force—at once synthetic and polemical. Grandin identifies a key thread in American history and follows it in broad strokes, but every chapter also includes great and surprising details. Among other observations, I was struck by how he was able to make Andrew Jackson’s politics comprehensible (and yes, reprehensible), and his analysis of NAFTA and its relationship to both American ideology and to the increasing narrative of crisis at the Mexican border will be invaluable for future historians and activists and critics too.
  
  There are excellent reviews out there on the internet—read the one by Jed Purdy—but I will add one note this book does assume some basic knowledge of history on the part of the reader. Figures like A. Philip Randolph and organizations such as the IWW are name dropped without any background info, so it may help some readers to have Wikipedia preloaded. Nevertheless it’s undoubtedly a worthwhile read.
• I feel like I have just completed two good books on different topics, one on the frontier and its impact on American thought and development, and the second on Trump's border wall. The first is far better. I don't buy the intersection between the frontier and the wall.
  
  Personnaly, I like Grandin a lot. I've now read five books by him and find his mix of history and politics to be provocative and stimulating. But he may not be to everyone's taste. Reagan and Bush fans may enjoy parts of it, but If you voted for Trump you may not be able to handle it
• I can not download this book to my . Please advise me what is wrong.
  
  Thanks.
• This is a carefully researched book and a brilliant analysis of the frontier and the wall in America. It should be required reading for all high school and college students. Grandin, who is a professor of history at Yale, takes the reader from the destruction of American Indians to the Trump While house without leaving anything out along the way. Its not a pretty trip, but he offers fabulous insights into how we got to where we are in 2019.
• I haven't read the book, tho after listening to the interview with the author on WNYC radio's On the Media program, I certainly intend to, but I did think, after listening to the adverts of that interview and the book, of how Hadrian's Wall, constructed in the 2nd C circa 125 AD, serves as a symbol which essentially marked the end of the expansion of the Roman Empire and the beginning of its lengthy constriction, how it marked a change in the mindset motivating that empire to protect what was instead of ever more expansion, and how the Trump wall fiasco is motivating the current US direction of looking inward instead of outward and onward.
  After all, as pointed out in the interview, Trump himself has proclaimed, "America first" which is a viewpoint, while not completely differing from anything previous, the way Trump couches its meaning, is far more limited than that which preceded, marked to my mind by our treatment of Europe post WWII. In order to benefit ourselves, we contributed largely to Europe's reconstruction to give our markets a means to benefit ourselves, and at the same time benefit the Europeans and the world.
  The Trump doctrine, stated in person just this week, is to withdraw aid in an attempt to force countries in duress to curtail the flight of their citizens towards the US.
  Thus, I think this book is uniquely timely and look forward to adding to this review.
• A fascinating book that gave me real insights in to understanding the republican mind set.