Seizing Destiny: The Relentless Expansion of American Territory (review)

20ogBook Reviews123 Seizing Destiny: The Relentless Expansion of American Territory. By Richard Kluger. (New York: Vintage, 2007. Pp. 668. Maps, bibliographical notes, index. ISBN 97803757 1 2982, $ 1 7.95 paper.) Richard Kluger has a gift for telling important, complex stories, as seen in books such as SimpleJustice: the History ofBrown v. Board ofEducation and Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred Year Cigarette War. He has won one Pulitzer Prize and has been nominated for two national book awards. His talent for writing epic and sprawling stories is demonstrated again in his latest book, SeizingDestiny, in which he recounts the messy and ugly history of American territorial acquisition. He begins with the first English colonists in the seventeenth century and finishes his tale with the taking of the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century. Kluger reviews three centuries of land greed, racism, and imperialism with the necessary critical eye, focusing most of his story on the nineteenth century. His cast of characters is vast and well known to specialists and ordinary readers, ranging from William Penn to James K. Polk to Theodore Roosevelt. He brings the long and often shameful story to life, filling his highly readable narrative with telling biographical portraits, interesting stories, and nuggets of forgotten history . This book, while unwieldy at more than 600 pages, is never boring even while covering familiar ground. The most useful chapters are those on the expected big topics in American expansion—the Louisiana Purchase, Texas, and the War with Mexico. Rushing through the colonial era, he makes a long ninety-page detour into the American Revolution before finally reaching the greatest era of U.S. territorial growth. Throughout the book few details are omitted that could be even remotely tied to his story. Kluger takes an entire chapter to establish the background for the negotiations over Louisiana, providing excessive detail on Napoleon's career, his grand imperialist plans and the slave rebellion in Haiti. Many parts of Seizing Destiny would have benefited from tough editing and some chapters could have been easily condensed to increase readability. Although his writing is always crisp and worthwhile, the sheer ocean of facts and details that he stuffs into his epic reduces its impact and usefulness for the general reader. This synthesis provides no new information or interpretation for the professional historian; it is grounded in secondary sources and reviews a well-known story. It is also often too dense to be of much interest for the average reader of American history. However, it is a clearly written, even passionate, condemnation of the ruthless rapacity that helped make the United States a continental nation and a global superpower. Seizing Destiny ends shortly after Roosevelt's acquisition of the Panama Canal. Kluger's last few pages attempt a brief analysis of the impact that such great territorial expansion has had on American history. He comes to the easy conclusion that the poverty and inequality of modern America is the result of the arrogance and entitlement of centuries of easy conquest. A relentless editor and a chapter that tied this long and sordid story to the great themes of American history—like he accomplished in his books on civil rights and the tobacco industry—would have made this very good book even better. Stephen F. Austin State UniversityJeff Bremer ...