America, América

A fascinating, insightful book that will transform your understanding of Latin America's crucial role in the rise of the United States and the making of the modern world.

Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis

Dazzling. Sweeping. Mind-altering. World-changing. This is a once-in-a-generation contribution destined to become our new reference for understanding the making of the modern world. With extraordinary depth, erudition and precision, Grandin avenges the dead and fights for the living.

Naomi Klein, bestselling author of Doppelganger

In this sweeping and provocative work, Greg Grandin provides a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the intertwined histories of the two Americas, foregrounding Latin American resistance to the hegemony of the United States. This is a compelling new vision of the relationship between the two continents.

Amitav Ghosh, author of the bestselling Ibis Trilogy and Smoke and Ashes

In America, América, Greg Grandin advances an urgent vision of the relational history of the Western hemisphere. Adding to his already extraordinary corpus of works and reinterpreting five centuries in broad and beautiful strokes, it ends with a chilling conclusion about the diplomatic and moral failures of our current politics and its return to unilateralism and deliberate misunderstandings of the past. A major and desperately needed synthesis of the Americas and the making of modernity.

Ned Blackhawk, author of National Book Award-winning The Rediscovery of America

America, América is the best kind of book: masterful and erudite yet absolutely riveting. By considering the long, sweeping story of Latin America and the United States in the same frame, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin has given us a novel and necessary understanding of a deeply entwined history that is sure to surprise readers, not least because he shows convincingly and urgently how a different past—and with it a different, better present—might have been possible.

Ada Ferrer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cuba: An American History

Here is American history told as it never has been told before, full of staggering violence and loss, unforgettable villains and heroes, and the courageous endurance of the poor multitudes, so many sources of inspiration. Beautifully written, this brilliantly researched and reasoned book helps account for the sorry state of the present while offering historical lessons on how we might reach a better future."

Francisco Goldman, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Monkey Boy

In his awe-inspiring masterpiece, Greg Grandin shows how hemispheric relationships have defined the history of the United States for five centuries. Latin Americans did more than decry our failures to live up to the new world’s revolutionary ideals. As our country ascended to hegemon in the last century, our neighbors pushed—in part because of their unequal might and wealth—for the reimagination of how the globe itself ought to be governed.

Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself

A passionate plea for a re-evaluation of the place of Spanish America... written with great flair and imagination, scattered with scintillating turns of phrase…as Grandin brilliantly shows, the USA still has much to learn from its neighbours in the south.

Anthony Pagden, Literary Review

This long-overdue volume by prizewinning scholar and Yale professor Grandin shows that Latin America's formation and founders are not only important but crucial to the understanding of America overall. Covering 500 years and events from conquests to wars to racism, America, América should be required reading in those history classes.

New York Times

Scintillating . . . It’s a monumental new view of the New World.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

One of the best historians today at writing for both scholars and the general public. This is an extraordinarily ambitious book... America, América reads at times as the historical equivalent of the great epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez.

Irish Times

Grandin makes a compelling case for the intricate connections tying the United States to its southern neighbors... in bright, fluid prose.

Foreign Affairs

A groundbreaking 500 year history that shows how the United States’ identity and historical self-understanding are inseparable from those of Latin America.

The Nation

Brilliant and urgently needed... America, América pursues its course across the centuries with verve, superb pacing, and impressive delicacy of touch.

LA Review of Books

A sweeping, magisterial analysis of 300 years of conflicting geopolitical understandings of sovereignty that have defined Anglo-American and Spanish American relations . . . The relevance of this history cannot be overemphasized.

Science

Grandin makes a persuasive case . . . If The End of the Myth helped make sense of the first Trump Administration, America, América sheds light on the expansionist ambitions Trump has voiced during his second term . . . Grandin suggests that historical struggles for social democracy across Latin America might serve as a model for a social-democratic movement of the future.

New Yorker

Compelling and written with zest…Don’t be surprised if he wins another Pulitzer

Financial Times