CHESTERTOWN, MD — Pulitzer Prize finalist Greg Grandin, whose new book “The End of the Myth: From Frontier to Border Wall in the Mind of America” has been listed for the National Book Award, will give a talk at Washington College examining the expansionist imperative across American history.
The free, public event on November 21, 2019 begins at 5:00 p.m. in Litrenta Lecture Hall in Toll Science Center and is hosted by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. The talk is part of the center’s Crossing Cultures Series, which seeks to foster informed dialogue on immigration, migration, intercultural exchange, and their impact on American life.
A reception will follow the program.
“Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea of never-ending expansion—either in the form of a landed frontier, economic growth, or, now, an endless war—has been central to American identity,” Grandin says. For centuries, America’s constant expansion—fighting wars and opening markets—served as a “gate of escape,” helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country’s problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly.
Grandin, a professor at New York University, is the author of “The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World,” “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City” (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and “Kissinger’s Shadow, the Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman.” A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Grandin served as a consultant to the United Nations truth commission on Guatemala and has received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, among others.
Since its debut in March, the Kirkus Review hailed “The End of Myth” as “an engaging and disquieting analysis of America’s recurring choice between ‘a humane ethic of social citizenship’ and barbarism.” According to Publishers Weekly: “this is a deeply polemical work, and should be read as such, but it offers a provocative historical exploration of a contentious current issue.” The book has been recently placed on the longlist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction.