The Course of Empire

by Bernard DeVoto

Book Overview

Tracing North American Exploration from Balboa to Lewis and Clark, Devoto tells in a classic fashion how the drama of discovery defined the American nation. The Course of Empire is the third volume in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395924987
• ISBN13: 9780395924983
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 688 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Quite Excellent.

This is a book about the exploration, not the settlement, of North America. As such, it traces the 278 year history of European and American efforts to penetrate and understand the North American continent.The Course of Empire then is a compendium of various and sometimes quite different national interests. Utilizing a chronological, fill in the blank approach, DeVoto literally fills in the map of North America as viewed, rightly or wrongly, by each succeeding explorer. Chapter by chapter this story unfolds across the entire history of North American exploration. Thus, the reader meets everyone in chronological sequence, starting with Balboa and ending with Lewis and Clark. Since subsequent explorers often had access to the records of those that preceded them, DeVoto is not only able to fill in the North American map with the contribution of each exploration, he is also able to link each exploration to its fundamental drivers: national intent and economic interest. As a result, he is able to underscore the ebb and flow of New World power as each country's global interests and economic situation changed over time.For example, Spain's 16th century interest was mostly focused on conquest and plunder. As a result, Spain's more northern explorations, led by De Soto and Coronado, were limited by the lack exploitable civilizations. In contrast, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada and Spain's decline as a world power, England's subsequent 17th and 18th century efforts were more driven by land acquisition, sugar and the fur trade. It is easy to see why then that the French and Indian War was fought and why Britain's explorations are so much more consistent and focused on such dramatically different sections of North America.Of critical interest is how the author weaves the unbelievable scope of this effort into a consistent whole, telling the story of how the geography of North America limited and encouraged continental expansion and ultimately defined the national borders of the United States. This is an excellent work and well worth your time.

The culmination of DeVoto's great history trilogy

Occasionally, I discover a book that is so great that I just want to grab my friends by the lapel and shout, "You just have to read this!" DeVoto in THE COURSE OF EMPIRES is not only highly informative, he has helped alter the way I view the course of American history and the way I view the geography of the United States. The book is not only informative and vision-altering: it is superbly well written. As a writer, Bernard DeVoto reminds me a great deal of Shelby Foote's historical work on the Civil War. Both DeVoto and Foote are novelists who brought their formidable literary skills to historical subject matter, and who framed their histories as narratives. Also like Foote, DeVoto never allows his narrative to overwhelm the history. At this point, this is my favorite book of all that I have read in 2002.On one level, the content of this book is displayed by the maps that begin each chapter of the book: a topographical map of North America is shown, with the areas as yet unexplored by Europeans in a gray shade. With each successive chapter, less and less of the map is shrouded in gray. But in a way, this is deceptive, because, in fact, the book is less about the history of the exploration of the US than in illustrating the geographical logic of the landmass currently making up the core of the United States. Or, as DeVoto writes in the Preface, he wants to provide an extended gloss on some paragraphs of Lincoln's Second Address to the Nation (i.e., what today would be called his second State of the Union address). In that Address, Lincoln argues that the geography of the United States makes it impossible for there to exist more than one nation in the region. The notion of secession and the formation of a second nation is repudiated by the land itself, not merely the lack of natural barriers of one area from another, but the way in which the entire region was unbreakably linked together by the extensive river system in the American interior. Lincoln saw that the geography, the river system, made it inevitable that there would be but a single nation. In this way, Lincoln, like no American president since Polk and Jefferson, understood the logic of the land. DeVoto's primary task in his book, far more than recounting the history of the exploration of North America, is the elucidation of the fact that the United States was destined to be a single country, and why this was inevitable.THE COURSE OF EMPIRE has the best maps I have ever seen in a history book. No matter what part of the book I was reading, it was possible to turn only a few pages away to find a map of the area under discussion. The only exception is near the very end of the book, where a key but cramped map of the Lewis and Clark expedition appears. It was, however, the only time that I had any trouble following one of the maps. Unfortunately, it was during the highpoint of the book: the recounting of Lewis and Clark's discovery of a route from the Missouri to the Co

A Classic Account of Exploration -- Probably De Voto's Best

De Voto's narrative of the first three centuries of European exploration in North America is a classic -- inevitably superceded in some details since its publication (1952) but unmatched in conveying a sense of the continent's geography as perceived by the early adventurers. Although it's not as tightly integrated as the more chronologically limited "Year of Decision", this is probably De Voto's finest work.

The discovery of the West over nearly three centuries

"We ever held it certain that going towards the sunset we would find what we desired." Thus the Spanish adventurer Cabeza de Vaca crossing New Mexico in 1535, and as Bernard DeVoto observes "in four centuries no one ever said it more fully." This book is more than a history of the American West. It's a history of the West as a driving idea, from the time when the Pacific seemed very, very close to the East Coast - perhaps no more than a mile according to one early mariner, who may in fact have been looking at Delaware Bay or Chesapeake Bay. From this early obscurity DeVoto chronicles how the people who would become Americans came to be aware that the land which they had settled was in fact a continent, and realised that the nation which they were forging must necessarily span it all. The book's dominant emotions are an intense love of the American landscape, and a profound admiration for the American people in all their diversity and energy. Especially the wilderness explorers, and it ends with a superb account of the expedition by the greatest of this heroic line, Lewis and Clark.

Defines the American spirit

Bernard DeVoto traces the movement of Europeans across North America. You learn the foibles and tortures of De Soto and his band of mauraders. You learn how the American colonists broke treaties that King George had contracted with the Native Americans. You learn the value of beaver pelts. Have an atlas in hand. You will re-learn the origins, glories and horrors, of your native land. The imperial spirit that founded America is found today in our myths and identity.