Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes Americas Role in the World by Robert D. Kaplan

Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes Americas Role in the World Reviews

• 
  Jim Fonseca

  
  The author is a think tank guy in foreign affairs and he has 17 books on that topic and travel. In this book he looks inward to US history and geography and how “American exceptionalism,” due to our geographical richness and our history of westward expansion, has shaped our world view that leads us to remain a major and an interventionist world power.
  
  This is not a new thesis. Kaplan distills the work of three earlier scholars who had lifetimes of work exploring these topics: Walter Prescott Webb (especially
  The Great Plains, 1931); Bernard DeVoto (especially
  The Year of Decision 1846 published in 1942, and
  Mark Twain's America, 1932) and Wallace Stegner, (especially
  Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, 1954).
  
  
  
  Kaplan brings us up to date on how he sees all this relating to modern events by taking a 30-day cross-country trip surveying the landscape and eavesdropping on people in restaurants to see what they are talking about. (He’s writing just before the recent presidential election.) So we get a lot of glib generalizations from his overnight stays such as the tackiness of modern suburban auto culture and fast food restaurants; the appalling sameness; what state lines you cross to see more or less obesity; how tourists at Mt. Rushmore are “families” but those at Zion National Park are more international and yuppie (although he doesn’t use that word).
  
  Small towns with colleges tend to have more of an international flavor and more upscale restaurants. He recognizes the unemployment, the hardship and the devastation in old steel towns like Portsmouth, Ohio and Wheeling, West Virginia. And given the timing of this book, we understand that when he talks about industrial devastation vs. upscale towns with colleges and an international flavor he’s really talking about Trump Town vs. Clintonville. The former folks are old fashioned nationalists; for the latter, their international outlook has “uprooted them from their terrain.” Kaplan tells us that only people in the Northeast commonly talk about politics in public.
  
  When you already have 17 books and, one assumes, a following, your editor lets you get away with a lot of sloppiness. There are errors: when he writes of the devastation of Wheeling, West Virginia compared to the more upscale Marietta Ohio, 100 miles away, he attributes that partly to the oil shale boom, but that boom in Ohio is actually across the river from Wheeling, not close to Marietta. Six times (count ‘em) we hear how teaching of US history in schools and universities is overly focused on the evils of slavery and the genocide of the American Indians. Four times we hear that Russia’s rivers flow north into the emptiness of the Arctic whereas American rivers are ideally oriented for transport. Three times we read that the USA has more navigable inland waterways than the rest of the world combined.
  
  
  
  Another theme that he plays is the juxtaposition of presidents Lincoln and James Buchanan (1857--1861) and their presidential homes. Lincoln was the first frontier president and Buchanan, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was a continuation of the line of eastern upper class presidents. Then Theodore Roosevelt switched from the eastern aristocracy (his home, Sagamore Hill on Long Island) to become a gun-toting western frontiersman. Kaplan tosses in a few references to the arts focused on America: the Hudson River school of painting; Walt Whitman’s poems. Yet another theme is the “verticality” of the East vs. the “horizontal” landscape of the West. A comparison of the USA vs. China also runs throughout the book culminating with a final section on “Cathay.” (Remember, Kaplan is primarily a foreign affairs scholar.)
  
  It’s a good compilation and review of the broad generalizations that make up a lot of “big thoughts” of American history and politics. Useful to think about as long as you take them with a grain of salt. “We became a nation, in part, by first becoming an army.” “The New Jersey Turnpike is central to the identity of this most crowded part of the country.” “The horrifying fact is, as King Philip’s War proved, removing the Indians was eminently practical for the settlers…” “…the Great Plains stopped slavery in its tracks, predetermining the defeat of the Confederacy.” He references Walter Russell Mead on the political outlook of Americans as being Wilsonian, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian or Jacksonian (Trumplanders).
  
  Broad generalizations are fun to think about. They always have a grain of truth in them. But it’s also a good metal challenge to think about disputing them. Sure, Russia has many geographical disadvantages in Siberia, such as its rivers flowing north, but even without Siberia, Russia is a huge, geographically rich nation. Sure, cotton could not grow on the Great Plains, but in an alternate universe, could the South have used slaves to grow wheat and herd cattle?
  
  Kaplan tells us that Webb wrote that “…The Great Plains…invented the cowboy tradition, by providing the perfect natural environment for men on horseback to manage large herds of cattle over substantial distances.” Who am I to dispute Webb, but here it is from other scholars: cowboy culture, cattle herding on horseback, started on the central Meseta of Spain; was imported to Mexico and migrated north to the American plains. That’s how horses came to the Americas, of course, and then the Indians adopted them. The best evidence is in the language of cowboy culture and all its Spanish-derived words: mesquite, sombrero, hacienda and bronco, Spanish for wild horse. Vaquero (cowboy) became “buckaroo” which also gave us “buck” as in “bucking bronco.” Chaparreras (leg armor) became chaps; pinta (spot) became pinto, a spotted horse; la reata (the rope) became lariat; lazo (rope noose) became lasso; estampida became stampede; rodear meaning round-up, became rodeo; arena (sand) gave us arena, etc.
  
  In the last section, Cathay, Kaplan takes us around the world, especially focusing on his book “
  The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War:” stop thinking things will get better. Although imperialists took over with bloody conquest, afterwards they generally kept order, established rudimentary education systems (the old “white man’s burden” concept) and stepped in to prevent massacres of minorities, which may not happen now. And the Cold War for all its faults let developing countries play off the US against the USSR for goodies. Now the only thing left outside the urbanized, industrialized West is often just chaos, worsened by social media that can encourage divisiveness and factionalism rather than centralization and authority. China has the geographical advantages we have; Russia does not. Chinese weakness and economic troubles, not strength, are a danger to us because that is when insecure national leaders start rattling swords to ferment nationalist feelings by picking on outside enemies to preserve their power. Beware the educated, Eastern “imperial class” and the press that wants us to intervene everywhere there are troubles – that’s a bottomless pit.
  
  Agree or disagree, thought-provoking stuff.
  
  Painting of wagon train from minibiz
  Picture of Wheeling, WV from Encyclopedia of Forlorn Places, eofp.net
  
• 
  Stacey

  This was the perfect balance of geography, history, and how it plays out today. It was a very informative read that kept my interest without being 'dry'. Sometimes non fiction runs into just facts and turns into a boring college lecture rather than something I chose to read on my free time.
  
  I liked the personal notes of Kaplan traveling with his father when he was a kid. It reminded me of when I was 8 and my parents and I drove from Seattle to Grand Forks, ND to help move my great-grand mother to a retirement home. It was summer and the car didn't have air conditioning, but I remember soaking in all the landmarks and the changing topography. That was 40+ years ago and I think that trip ignighted a life long interest in traveling by car (with air conditioning). I still can't navigate a map for the life of me, but there's still time.
• 
  Tom Mathews

  There are memoirs of road trips that are guaranteed to stand the test of time; Francis Parkman’s
  The Oregon Trail, John Steinbeck’s
  Travels with Charley, Jack Kerouac’s
  On the Road, and Ernesto Guevara’s
  The Motorcycle Diaries to name just a few. Robert D. Kaplan’s latest book describing his journey through the heartland of the United States in 2015 just as the primary season for the recent election was getting under way is probably not one of those. But in its own way,
  Earning the Rockies: American Ground and the Fate of Empire is just as important a book. Kaplan took his trip during a defining moment in American history and through keen observations provided invaluable insights into the story behind the most mindboggling political upset in American history.
  
  Kaplan, inspired by his father’s tales of travel and the books of Harpers’ columnist
  Bernard DeVoto (Don’t worry. I hadn’t heard of him before either.), set out to find America by retracing a journey he took as a young man in 1970. This time, he sought to gain an understanding of how geography shapes America and makes us Americans who we are. In doing so, he linked his journey westward with that of America’s journey west over the centuries. Although ‘manifest destiny’ and ‘American exceptionalism’ are terms often heard in conjunction with discussions about f imperialism, Kaplan holds that the rigors of westward migration and the land itself forged and molded those who challenged the frontier and continue to shape and define them today.
  
  Kaplan’s journey began in the spring of 2015, just as the Republican primary with its vast herd of presidential wannabes was getting started. His strategy included spending a good deal of time in in restaurants and coffee shops, just listening to the conversations that swirled around him. His logic was that while people may adopt a pose when speaking with strangers in general and journalists in particular, they speak most openly when in the company of friends and family in a non-threatening environment. One thing that surprised him was that although the televisions were constantly blaring political and international news, these were seldom the topic of conversations. Talk was more likely to be about ‘work, family, health and sheer economic survival’. What was happening on the TV was just noise to them. The real drama was playing out right there in the room with them. As Kaplan pointed out, “Frontiers test ideologies like nothing else. There is no time for the theoretical…Idealized concepts have rarely taken firm root in America. People here are too busy making money — an extension of the frontier ethos, with its emphasis on practical initiative.”
  
  Perhaps even more than what he heard, Kaplan was deeply affected by what he saw as he crossed the country. Many cities and towns were dying. In cities like Wheeling, West Virginia, and even Springfield, the capitol if Illinois, one was more likely to encounter empty streets and boarded up shops than indications of a healthy economy. Cities that once housed a vibrant middle class now have only a struggling working class that is teetering on the brink of poverty. Automation and globalization have gutted the mining and manufacturing industries that many communities relied on for their economic existence. Kaplan also attributed this decline to what he called the growth of ‘flashy and sprawling city-states, often anchored to great universities’ such as Chicago, Austin, or Raleigh-Durham with its Research Triangle. These urban centers offered jobs and opportunities for young people and stripped places like Wheeling of any chance that an ambitious future generation will stay and turn things around.
  
  

  “I will not see very much of the middle class in my journey at all. This thing that the politicians love to talk about has already slipped from our grasp. I will encounter elegant people in designer restaurants and many, many others whose appearance indicates they have in some important ways just given up — even as they are everywhere unfailingly polite and have not, contrary to their appearance and my first impressions of them, lost their self-respect. The populist impulses apparent in the presidential campaign following my journey in early 2015 obviously emanate from the instability of their economic situation, suggesting the anger that resides just beneath the surface of their politeness."

  
  
  And this, more than anything else, is the crux of the issue when it comes to Donald Trump. Per Kaplan,

  "Trump represents a sort of antipolitics: a primal scream against the political elite for not connecting with people on the ground, and for insufficiently improving their lives. People trapped in their own worries as life becomes ever more complex, are simply alienated. And that alienation is registered in a taste for populist politicians."

  What is the value of preaching diversity to a community that has none, or trade deals to a town whose local market has closed because it couldn’t compete with a Wal-Mart thirty miles away? Much of the world that these people yearn for is gone and they know it isn’t coming back. But still if a politician comes to their town and says “I here you, and I am with you,” don’t you think that they will be tempted to believe in him, even if deep down they know better?
  
  For better or worse, the genie of globalism is out of the bottle. While there are many benefits to a global economy, there are also areas of concern.

  “ the weakness of global culture is that, having psychologically disconnected itself from any specific homeland, it has no terrain to defend or to fight for, and therefore no anchoring beliefs beyond the latest fashion or media craze. And so we unravel into the world. And the more disconnected we become from our territorial roots, the greater the danger of artificially restructuring American in more severe and ideological form, so that we risk radicalization at home. "

  
  Bottom line: Of all the books and articles that I have read recently in hopes of gaining an understanding of what the hell happened in November, this comes closest to giving me an answer. No, we are not a nation of racist misogynists. What we are is a nation of people who once in a while would like to believe that the powers that be are listening to us. If we believe that all politicians lie, then why not vote for the one whose lies tell us what we want to hear? Perhaps, as the saying goes, you really can fool all of the people some of the time.
  
  *Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.
  
  FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
  *5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
  *4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
  *3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
  *2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
  *1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.
  
• 
  Lauren

  Based on the title, I didn't expect this book to be a travelogue. I was expecting more philosophy, more history. Instead, we got Kaplan recounting his roadtrip and making assumptions.
  
  If Kaplan would have stuck to the theoretical approach, he could have avoided the book's two biggest pitfalls:
  - The book was written during the Presidential Primaries of 2015 and 2016. This seems like ages ago now, and he makes many assumptions about the election that... didn't happen.
  - Instead of actually talking to people in coal country, the plains, the mountains, and the west coast, he chooses to just creep on their conversations at various diners, cafes, and restaurants. This seemed really sloppy, and lead him to make even more assumptions based on a single conversation that he overhears at IHOP/Bob Evans/Waffle House/Denny's.
  
  This book had the potential and capacity to be much more. Still, I took away some things from it, and I want to find some other books that get more to the heart of this subject.
  
  3 stars
  
• 
  Rachel

  If you ever want to have American exceptionalism mansplained to you, check out Earning the Rockies.
  
  There are so many problems with this book that it's hard to know where to start, but one place that's as good as any other is my complete confusion about the audience for this book. I still have no idea who he was writing this for- or why he was writing it. Anyone who has completed a run-of-the-mill public school education will be very familiar with his perspective on American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, even if they don't remember the terms for them. What little "evidence" he produced to support his claims around those well-worn nationalistic tropes was based entirely on loose impressions he formed while stopping in at interstate rest stops - or eating at Chili's.
  
  Readers are left to rely on his logical reasoning for his arguments that America was destined to lead, yadayadayada, which is a problem because there are several large, inherent contradictions to his position. For example, one of his repeated assertions is that the abundance of rivers and the fact they run horizontally in our part of North America were the determining factor in the U.S. becoming a single nation-state. That's fine if you ignore the hundreds of tribes that lived here before European settlement and how they never formed a single nation-state. Or if you ignore Spanish and French settlements that survived several hundred years before the Louisiana Purchase and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo- and how New Spain and New France were constrained by the Red River and the Appalachian Mountains. The rivers might have helped pique Americans' interest in that territory, but obviously technological advances developed in Europe, widespread disease, and foreign wars had a lot to do with it, too.
  
  Then there's his assumption that globalization is generally kinda bad while nationalism is kinda good- unless you're China. He convolutes arguments around the necessity of developing grounding, national identities with identifying with specific landscapes and territories- even while developing the argument that the frontier mindset, which is crucial to American identify, is based on movement and self-reliance in new landscapes (which he then ties into American imperialism, which isn't really imperialism, but even if it was, that wouldn't be so bad, would it? I mean, Russian imperialism is bad, but we're the good guys.). So he bemoans the small towns that are being gutted as globalization drives development toward certain communities and away from others, arguing somehow that supporting these dying towns is more American than forging new opportunities elsewhere. But don't confuse this idea with actual concern for any of the people living in these towns. They seem to have "given up" as evidenced by their sloppy clothes and poor dietary choices. (Let me remind you that most of his observations are coming from roadside gas stations.)
  
  Anyway, even readers who agree with his worldview will find this a flimsy read. I finished it partly because it was so short, though I suspect it would have been a much better book if he had taken another 100 pages or so to develop and support his claims, and partly because I began to enjoy yelling at this guy every time I opened the book.
  
  On the plus side, I've been inspired to revisit some of Wallace Stegner's work and I learned about Bernard DeVoto who was sort of a local hero, awarded an honorary PhD from CU Boulder and whose letter to Raleigh Blake, a high school graduate seeking advice about higher education, I wish I had read years earlier and will include a link to here:
  https://www.centerwest.org/wp-content... .
• 
  Cheryl

  America is a continent? The good folks of Mexico and Canada might have something to say about that. Pittsburgh is a masculine city? What about the wives, mothers, sisters? People who live in 'red' regions/states are fearful of the slim & pretty cosmopolitans of the urban coasts? :dropped jaw:
  
  p. 57. I'm done. I've 'earned the Rockies' from both sides, several times, and don't need Kaplan's weird vision to elucidate what seems obvious to me.
  
  To know a country, you must spend time in it, with the people of it, using intelligent sampling. Don't just fly from one coastal world-city to another. And don't just listen to conversations at rest areas and historic monuments, either.
  
  I won't rate this, as I didn't finish it. But I think probably, tbh, 2 stars instead of just one, because there do seem to be a few interesting tidbits.
• 
  Larry

  Robert’s Kaplan’s EARNING THE ROCKIES: HOW GEOGRAPHY SHAPES AMERICAN’S ROLE IN THE WORLD is a work of geographical determinism. How could it be anything but that with a title like that.? But it’s still a very good book, and I think it makes a successful argument for why geography has determined America’s role in the world.
  
  The book begins with an extended exploration of the works of the American historian, Bernard DeVoto. Kaplan revisits what he says is DeVoto’s greatest work, THE YEAR OF DECISION:1846. He explains that DeVoto spends a lot of pages on Indians and Mormons before telling the story of how America drifted into a war with Mexico. But above all, DeVoto’s book is a look at westward expansion and how geography and human ambition were intertwined in shaping that expansion. (I had an old copy of the DeVoto book. As a result of reading Kaplan’s book, I bought copies of the other two books in his historical trilogy. They are ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI and THE COURSE OF EMPIRE.) He says this about these books. As great as they are, DeVoto's writings are forgotten today because the West is just there in those writings, devoid of theorizing. I think that makes sense.
  
  Kaplan then starts the tale of his own recent westward journey across the United States. He begins at Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s home on Long Island, and talks about how Roosevelt acquired greatness. It was mainly his Western experiences as a young man, but it didn’t hurt that he read a new book every evening. It’s not along way before he arrives at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where James Buchanan’s house is. Kaplan simply notes, “He was our worst President” (this book was written last year).
  
  Before long, he is in Wheeling, WV, a city that "appear as if struck by a plague." He says that the town barely has a pulse. And then on into Ohio. He gets to Marietta, which is doing well. He explains that it's near natural gas fracking country., which provided industry and jobs and also says that it's the home of Marietta College, which is a strong liberal arts college. And then he’s into Portsmouth, Ohio which feels even emptier than Wheeling, WV. In 1970, cities and towns like Wheeling and Portsmouth were alive.
  
  But in Indiana, things come alive again. Especially in Bloomington, where 46,000 students attend Indiana University. IU, like the other American state universities, is where much of the scientific, technological, and engineering research and training is done.
  
  At this point, he explains the political differences of what he has seen from before this book and as he was writing this book. He recommends the thoughts here of Walter Russell Mead and Meads’s conclusion that the "the elites in Washington or New York are Wilsonians, Hamiltonians, or Jeffersonians. … but the broad mass of Americans are Jacksonian." The latter is largely due to the Scots-Irish who came to America in the 18th and 19th centuries and helped originate the frontier culture." Americans largely do not want to know the details about foreign policy.
  
  In this westward journey, Kaplan has brought along THE PORTABLE FAULKNER. But even more importantly, he has brought along Walter Prescott Webb's THE GREAT PLAINS, published in 1931. Webb focuses on the scarcity of water past the 100th median. The buffalo, which grazed on the short grass, was well suited for the Great Plains, and for human beings, the Great Plains encouraged self reliance and risk taking. He explains how this helped make America what it was after the frontier itself closed and led to a special kind of American Imperialism, including the conquest of the Philippines in 1899. A hundred years later, by 2000, the United States had 700 military bases in more than 130 countries.
  
  So, what are Kaplan’s own politics? It’s sort of hard to say. He never really explains but I think he’s a mild neo-con. He argues that the United States journey westward has continued in that we have become a Pacific nation and explains how the most important strategic weapons of the United States are the 11 carrier task forces.
  
  I do like what he says in his Epilogue, where he explains where alienation is coming from and how that makes people prone to demagogues. He explains how the U.S. urban areas are becoming global city-states. And finally he says that the answer to the [economic] devastation of Wheeling, West Virginia and Portsmouth, Ohio is not retrenchment or isolationism.
  
  My own summary is that the writing is not great. It’s good journalism and typical of Kaplan’s other books. The book is thoughtful and even important for the issues it explores as he travels across the United States. And it’s particularly good in giving credit and recognition to some older history books, like the Devoto ones, that deserve to be read more these days.
• 
  Caren

  This book is the PBS Newshour/NY Times book club selection for this month, which is why I read it. The author is known for his idea that the geography of a country creates its destiny. In the course of traveling from east to west on a road trip across the USA in 2015, he muses on ways in which the diagonal flow of rivers in the East and the aridity of the West have influenced the development and outlook of the American psyche. His travels inspire memories of his first cross -country journey with his father when he was a child, and a second such journey alone as a young man. Now in his 60s, he says this may be the final time he takes this route. Along the way, he notes how the changing landscape affects his mood and how it may have influenced early settlers. Taking his time, he stops at diners and small hotels and records the flavor of conversations he mostly overhears. The book is a sort of snapshot in time of the tenor of the country just before the last election. He believes that the favorable geography of this country makes it necessary that we stay engaged as a global leader. This is perhaps a somewhat controversial idea these days. Just this morning, the New York Times ran an article discussing differing viewpoints on that:
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/22/wo...
  At any rate, the biographical blurb says he was once the national security chair of the U.S. Naval Academy and a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, so I think his ideas deserve serious attention. It is a book that gives a reader lots to think about, which I am sure is why it was chosen for the book group. I look forward to hearing the author interviewed on the Newhour at the end of the month.
  
• 
  Conrad

  When you flip the book over and look on the back at the endorsements for this book by Henry Kissinger, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. James 'Mad Dog' Mattis you realize that Kaplan has something important to tell you in this book. It is not politically correct - he speaks frankly about the dark side of America's history as well as its achievements, but he makes the case that America is exceptional and has a destiny/fate to be the world leader and to be the city on a hill or the beacon of hope for millions around the world.
  Initially he draws on the history of the westward expansion and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny to describe how America grew to be the preeminent Superpower it is today. He then spends time in the latter pages to analyze the current geopolitical situation in the world and America's response to those conditions. He warns against the dangers of isolationism but balances it with a warning of getting bogged down in a foreign quagmire. Initially, he was a supporter of the war in Iraq but in retrospect he admits that it was a failed effort at nation building and that it is foolish for America to think that we can reproduce our grand experiment on other nation states that have a far different worldview from our own.
  At only 180 pages this is really one long essay, but it packs a lot of information and a lot of ideas to consider. Kaplan has traveled widely and written about many diverse parts of the world so this is a very well thought out book and one worth reading and pondering.
• 
  Peter Tillman

  Geography is destiny, Kaplan argues persuasively in this fine, short book on topics he's been thinking about for a long time. He makes a good case for American exceptionalism, based on our long experience with settling and conquering our frontier territories. Geography brought the US great wealth, and hence great responsibilities. He argues for continued support of what's left of the Pax Americana, where that's practical. Avoiding (for the most part) West Africa and the Middle East. Better to concentrate our efforts on Asia and the Pacific. He argues that the US Navy maintains order on the high seas, permitting orderly commerce worldwide. "Do not ever take those ships for granted," he says.
  
  I've been reading Robert Kaplan's stuff for years, mostly his long articles for the Atlantic (Monthly), and have generally admired his practical-minded approach to America's international affairs.
  
  The New York Times published a long, worthwhile review recommending Kaplan's book:
  
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/bo...
• 
  Michael Neiberg

  I'll save you the bother of reading it: America is big, I have read books by authors you have never heard of that I think are important, professors are snobby, Wheeling is deserted, Des Moines is friendly, people in the heartland are obese and don't use smartphones, Omaha is bigger than I thought it would be, and geography is destiny except when it isn't. Oh, and Pittsburgh's skyline sneaks up on you if you approach from the east [note: it does not if you approach it from the west, but why look at a problem from multiple angles?]. If you want a tour of America one paragraph per place, this is your book. I have found utility is some of Kaplan's other works, but this was empty. There is no there there.
• 
  gaudeo

  This is a unique book: a meditation on domestic geography that morphs into a commentary on international policy. I confess that it's the geography that interested me most, having grown up in the Great Plains, which figure so prominently in Kaplan's thinking. But his extrapolation from America's expansion westward to its quasi-imperialism on the world stage is quite thought-provoking, particularly given the present political climate. This is not a long book, but it requires thinking--always a good thing.
• 
  Glee

  The first two-thirds of this book was wonderful. It fell off a bit at the end, but it was still good. The early part of the book was a terrific version of the "geography is destiny" lecture.
  
  Beginning with an extended trip with his parents in 1962, and ending with a trip by himself in 2016, Kaplan entertainingly brings you along for the ride. In 1962, the trip was limited to the eastern United States, and involved visiting many presidential homes - Buchanan, Jefferson, and of course, Lincoln - with an eye toward how each fit into American expansion. The history lessons imparted to Kaplan by his father were still very alive for him and he makes them so for the reader.
  
  Toward the end of the book, I think maybe Kaplan was pushing it to make his deadline. But he takes you with him as he visits diners, BBQ joints, regional fast food eateries, all with an eavesdropping ear for his fellow diners as he makes his way across the Great Basin and ends in San Diego. He makes quite a point of how little conversation outside of the Boston-NY-Washington corridor is about politics. Not that that is a surprise, but I was expecting more conflict than was evident.
  
  Finally, while I much prefer fiction to nonfiction, this is an exception.
• 
  James Perry

  Robert Kaplan, a skilled writer with a wealth of global experience, falls victim to a sad parochialism in this book that seems to have been inspired by a narrow reading of Bernard DeVoto and Wallace Stegner, two prolific writers of the American scene. What we have with "Earning the Rockies" is a case of ALL THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS being drawn from otherwise legitimate sources.
  To begin with, Kaplan writes that "Manifest Destiny may have been raw and cruel and rapacious, but it was also an undeniable historical movement, as well as a definable mood of the times. And without it, obviously, the United States would simply have been unable to achieve what it did in the twentieth century in Europe and Asia." This is not "obvious" at all. It actually represents a huge inferential leap, linking a nineteenth-century land grab to a twentieth-century fight against fascism.
  This proclivity towards apologia for the grim facts of America's past leads the author to prescribe a nationalistic approach to global affairs. He writes, "global culture has a fatal weakness. Uprooted from terrain, there is less to fight for, since the homeland means less than it used to." History, on the other hand, suggests the exact opposite: a globalized worldview is anathema to provincialism and xenophobia. There is less to fight for, so there are fewer fights.
  The author continues in this vein until he strangles himself with his own convoluted logic: "The great crime [the extermination of Native Americans] is like a stone caught in your throat. As much as you try to swallow it, by pointing to all the good that the advanced industrial culture that replaced the native one has wrought, you can't quite do it. Yet you still must breathe. The only answer to the crime committed here is for the United States to use the resulting power that has come with the conquest of a continent in order to continue to do good in the world." His circular logic - The slaughter of the native population cannot be absolved by pointing to all the good that industrial culture has wrought; the only answer is for industrial culture to continue to do good in order to absolve itself - is enough to make one reach for a bottle of whisky.
  In the end, the author seems to give up on logic and resorts to a kind of Capra-esque nostalgia for an America that has lost her way: "America has been on a long journey, away from its own history and toward becoming enmeshed in a global history. The irony is that to be effective globally, American leaders must be anchored to their own soil. It is their own soil - the landscape through which I now pass, overpowering and largely empty - that alone can properly orient them." One cannot help but hear echoes of the chants at Charleston - Blood and Soil! - to understand the danger of such reasoning. And why must we be "anchored in our own soil"? What is the point? Sadly, the author answers this question with the following declaration: "America is fated to lead. That is the judgment of geography as it has played out over the past two and a half centuries." We must anchor ourselves to the soil because the soil provides the geographic determinism that allows us chosen folk to effectively subdue the savages. If this sounds uncomfortably close to Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden" Kaplan removes any doubt with the following comment: "Bernard DeVoto grasped that the blessings of geographical fate had burdened America with global responsibilities."
  If the reader is discomfited by where this reasoning seems to be tending, Kaplan reassures them that "Most civilizational advancements occurred under imperial systems ... For millennia, in the interregnums between empires, anarchy often reigned. Who says imperialism is necessarily reactionary? Athens, Rome, Venice, and Great Britain were still, with all of their cruelties, the most enlightened regimes of their day." To drive home the point he states that "The British may have ultimately failed in India, Palestine, and elsewhere, but the larger history of the British Empire is one of providing a vast armature of stability, fostered by sea and rail communications, where before there had been demonstrably less." This is a corporatist view of history. STABILITY = GOOD INVESTMENT CLIMATE = PROFIT = THE GREATER GOOD. Never mind the oppression, that's not the "larger history" .
  Finally the author collapses into nonsense, declaring that "The United States must henceforth deploy the resources of a continent in order to negotiate a global situation of comparative anarchy." A comment which can be paraphrased as "Get it while you can!" This is exactly the kind of reasoning you can expect from someone who willingly submits to the tragedy of the commons. Kaplan himself admits this when he writes, "our expanding urban areas are becoming global city-states, with increasingly dense and meaningful connections with the outside world. But the weakness of global culture is that, having psychologically disconnected itself from any specific homeland, it has no terrain to defend or to fight for, and therefore no anchoring beliefs beyond the latest fashion or media craze." NO TERRAIN TO DEFEND OR TO FIGHT FOR if the limits of your vision are your own national borders. Why do we need to “defend” or “fight” for a homeland that is not under attack? Why not embrace the “meaningful connections with the outside world” rather than lament the loss of a narrow American view?
• 
  Blaine Welgraven

  "If I don't remember my father's name, who will? My father's name was Philip Alexander Kaplan. He was born in Brooklyn in 1909. I don't recall him ever at peace with his life. I do remember him looking serene once at Valley Forge...for it was only such places, away from our immediate surroundings, that my father became real to me, and real to himself." -- Robert D. Kaplan, Earning the Rockies, 3
  
  "It is true that historical research is necessary to defeat jingoistic nationalism. The more history we know, the more complex the story of our past becomes and the more realistic we can be about it. But without some kind of usable past, there is no possibility of affecting geopolitics for the good. How do we know where to go if we can't draw upon some inspiration from the past?
  
  There is too much destruction coming out of the academy, not enough inspiration. We require a proper balance." -- Ibid, 91.
  
  A beautiful, heartfelt travelogue containing profound, realist-leaning geopolitical insights and cautionary historical reminders. What I appreciate most about Kaplan is his consistent willingness to approach old, little-read texts by authors who would not be deemed acceptable or "sensitive" enough within modern academia, but whom Kaplan approaches nevertheless, insensitivities and political correctness aside, because they capture history "as it really was." Highly recommend.
• 
  Steve Greenleaf

  The books and articles by Robert D. Kaplan that I've read before (and there have been quite a few of them) have usually dealt with far-away lands. But in this book, published in 2017, Kaplan came home. In this book, he again combines his journalist's eye with a background of deep reading.
  
  Taking his lead from trips made with his father when Kaplan was a boy in the 1960s (he was born in 1952), Kaplan acknowledges the effect that these journeys had on this boy from Queens, in addition to the stories his father told of his travels during the Depression that covered most of the "lower 48" states. Those trips must have helped plant some of the wanderlust that Kaplan has exhibited as an adult, with travels to over 100 countries throughout the world. But in this book, beginning on Long Island, and proceeding through Pennsylvania. Ohio, and Indiana and on through the Midwest and the Great Plans, Kaplan begins his drive toward San Diego. But unlike other journeys, Kaplans doesn't conduct interviews along the way; instead, he observes and eavesdrops. He undertook this journey in 2015, so he gained some premonition of the political upheaval to come (he heard little discussion of politics). As he travels and listens, he notices places thriving and places struggling: Wheeling, West Virginia and another city in Ohio are shrinking and obviously struggling, while the small city of Marietta, Ohio, seems to be doing well, apparently because it has a well-regarded liberal arts college there that draws students (and dollars) from around the world. And so it goes. All along the way, Kaplan describes a landscape familiar to anyone from the Midwest: some cities thriving (like Des Moines, Iowa) and other cities and towns struggling and in an acute decline. I can attest to the many small cities and towns in Iowa that have suffered declines in population and standards of living.
  
  In addition to his travels and his first-hand conversations and observations, Kaplan stands-out for his deep reading. Through his reading of Herodotus and Thucydides to contemporary political thinkers like Francis Fukuyama and John Mearsheimer and follow writers like Patrick Leigh Fermor and Claude Magris in Europe, Kaplan reads deeply about the past to bring perspective to his observations about the places and times that he inhabits. I should note that when Kaplan references a noted author, he's not just checking a box, he proves himself a deep and careful reader. For this trip, Kaplan consults three great authors in the mid-20th century who wrote about the American West and the conquest of the continent, Bernard DeVoto, Wallace Stegner, and Walter Prescott Webb (with a hat tip to William Faulkner as Kaplan by-passes by the South). Each of these writers provides a melody upon which Kaplan plays a riff, noting as he does, that their melodies may not sound completely dulcet to our contemporary ears. But despite some differences from contemporary sensibilities, none of these authors were merely triumphalist in their appraisals of the American project. Kaplan, as he peruses the history of westward expansion while drives across the continent, notes the irreconcilable moral judgments involving the creation of a great nation that led the fight against totalitarian nations in the 20th-century but that arrived at its great power status through the terrible genocide against the American Indians. Part of what attracts me to Kaplan's work is his appreciation and nuance in addressing the moral ambiguities and moral tragedies that politics often entails. (He has repeatedly repented his support of the Iraq War for some time now.)
  
  Kaplan also makes an important point--and this is perhaps his main point--that our experience as an expanding, continental power in the fertile, relatively underpopulated area of temperate North America, played into our thinking as an international power that began with Theodore Roosevelt and that reached its apex in my lifetime. He also appreciates the distinction between the myth of the Marlboro man (the lone cowboy) and the reality of communal regulation in a land where water is scarce. He describes the success of the Mormon venture (chronicled, at least for purposes of this book, by Wallace Stegner) by noting that the Mormon trek and settlement of the Salt Lake area was very much a communal venture. Not lonely cowboys or gunslingers, but a tightly organized, hierarchical venture, fostered the material success that remains apparent to this day.
  
  Kaplan concludes his journey at the San Diego naval base, where American ships look out toward "Cathy"--China. In his appreciation of the importance of our Pacific shore and outlook, Kaplan seems to capture an outlook forwarded by William Irwin Thompson in the mid-1980s. Thompson described a shift in the center of power and culture from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and, in the late 20th-century, to the Pacific. While one might contest such a construal of historical dynamics, I suspect that Thompson, writing in the 1980s (Pacific Shift (1986)), and Kaplan would likely agree. I suspect that in part because of his deep reading and extensive travel, Kaplan is correct in his perception of a shift in the center of power (and thus our attention) toward the Pacific and Asia (to include the Indian Ocean area and India). These areas have been topics of his earlier books and with more than half of the current population of the world located in a circle that encompasses an area centered in the South China Sea. This area has gone an immense cycle of economic growth, and no doubt this part of the world will become increasingly important to the Americas as a whole, the people of the United States, and their government.
  
  [The Valeriepieris circle: more than half the current world population lives inside this circle]
  
  Taking this brief but instructive trip with Kaplan across the United States is well worth the brief time required, and it provides us a perspective upon the future by a deep appreciation of our past.
• 
  Ray LaManna

  Kaplan emphasizes the importance of geography when talking about our nation's history as well as geopolitical issues... a very good and succinct discussion.
• 
  Crispin Burke

  Not good. The first two thirds of the book are part travelogue but also consist of Kaplan summarizing a bunch of books he read about Westward expansion. The last third is basically a rehash of old Kaplan works including The Revenge of Geography and lays out a worldview in which neoconservatism and liberal interventionism overlap.
• 
  Reneesarah

  This is one of the worst books I have ever started to read. I have not finished reading every page of the book, but I am definitely finished with the book. I cannot fathom what motivated the PBS/New York Times book club to choose this book for their book club this month.
  
  Let me share a couple of quotes:
  
  "DeVoto intuited deep in his bones, perhaps better than anyone else before or since, that the conquest of the Great Plains and the Rockies had been a necessary prelude in order to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese."
  
  Well let's deconstruct that a bit. The Great Plains and the Rockies were not empty land. Our author is failing to mention that people lived there and had been there for for hundreds of years before white immigrants decided to rip the land from them. There were Native Americans living there and taking the land meant taking it from them and murdering them and commiting genocide in the process. So is the author supporting the idea that murder and genocide of Native Americans was "necessary" to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese?
  
  A little bit later the books says: "Manifest destiny may have been raw and cruel and rapacious, BUT (my emphasis) it was also an undeniable historical movement, as well as a definable mood of the times. And without it, obviously, the United States would simply have been unable to achieve what it did in the twentieth century in Europe and Asia."
  
  Let's look at that quote. The first thing I will note is that any time you use the word "but" you have negated what comes before it. Manifest destiny and white supremacy are so entwined that they might as well be lovers. They march to the same drum beat. And if manifest destiny was a "definable mood of the times" who was it a mood of the times for? Was it a mood of the times for Blacks? No. For Native Americans? No. It was only a "mood of the times" for white immigrants willing to murder and commit genocide to take control of lands in the Western United States. Yet in this passage, like in so many corrupted history texts, it is assumed that what white people thought and did is the only thing that matters. Additionally we are told that manifest destiny was necessary for the United States to achieve what it did in the twentieth century. Oh really?
  
  My time would be better spent rereading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" rather than reading this.
• 
  Murilo Silva

  The book is composed of 5 chapters. The first talks about how the author’s father inspired him and taught him about the US. Second talks about how Bernard DeVoto taught him about the United States’ current grandiosity and how its geography was relevant to achieving it. These two chapters are ok, but second one pissed me off a little bit because of Kaplan’s relativization of things.
  
  Now, the gold in this book are on the following 2 chapters: the author has an unimaginable knowledge about the US’ history and geography, and he travels across the entire country observing and overhearing people all around the place with the goal of understanding how its geography shapes the country and how its current state is. Magnificent! Even for me that am not an American, I enjoyed his marvelous and impassioned description of this continental landmass. Truly wonderful and is the sole reason why I am giving this book 4 stars. If the book stopped on this 4th chapter, it would have been 5 stars.
  
  However, the fifth chapter is a bunch of foreign policy nonsense which can be summarized with a sentence the author used a few times: (because of our unique geography, which is the best in the whole world) we are fated to lead”. There is so much moral relativism and logical inconsistencies in his argument that is just pitiful. However, it demonstrates in an enlightened way the justification for American imperialism and its exceptionalism, which most Americans do believe in. I read this with the goal of trying to understand American patriotism and nationalism, and I did. Much better than I did before.
  
  But come on, it’s pretty basic. Americans are not exceptional. USA does not have the best geography of the world. It is not morally better than other countries. It is no ethical paladin. Just fucking face it already. Glamorizing something passionately is different from rationally analyzing it to discover the truth.
  
  I do think Americans need to love their America. Love it away! You should indeed think your country is great and has an awesome history. However, stop thinking you are the ONLY ONE that can be great.
  
  In any case, I do recommend this book for every American and anyone interested in the US as a whole. I will certainly reread this book again once I study more deeply American history and geography.
• 
  Stephen Durrant

  As a child of the American West, how could I not like Kaplan’s argument that the Western movement, particularly the encounter with the Great Plains was determinative in forging the American spirit? Moreover, my high school teachers often referenced Bernard DeVoto, not much spoken about these days—he was in vogue then, at least among Westerners. DeVoto was a writer, as later Wallace Stegner, who made us proud of who we were and what our ancestors had accomplished. Of course, as Kaplan points out quite clearly, there was a dark side to all of this. The Western movement involved terrible acts of violence and the cruel appropriation of others’ lands. But, as Kaplan argues, that’s what made America, for better or for worse. Of course, this too bothers me as a Westerner, but it’s Kaplan’s next step that troubles me even more: somehow the doctrine of Manifest Destiny is still operative and reaches out from the naval yards of San Diego into the Pacific and elsewhere . . . and that is for the best. In fact, Kaplan makes an argument for an imperial America, although he thinks imperialist idealism must always be restrained by a sense of reality. While I too reject nationalist retrenchment, whether in America or elsewhere, I am less sanguine about American interventionalism than he is. Still, this is a stimulating and worthwhile read, even if one eventually, as I did, parts company with the arc of his argument.
• 
  Adam

  In many ways 'Earning the Rockies' feels like a capstone for the arc of Robert Kaplan's work from the mid-nineties through today. It is more a collection of two essays than a book, but it is well worth reading.
  
  The first essay follows Kaplan's journey across continental United States, framing its narrative with the history of America's westward expansion and the state of America's heartland today.
  
  The second essay, far shorter than the first, focuses on the United State's role in the broader world. Drawing on themes established in the first essay, it defends Kaplan's description of the United States as an empire, his advocacy of realism, and limited American engagement with the rest of the world.
  
  Kaplan's defence of realism, particularism over universalism, and what he describes as 'cruel objectivity' is the maturation and conclusion of controversial arguments that he started a long time ago. They are best appreciated as such. While its style is accessible enough, I would hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who isn't already familiar with at least some of Kaplan's previous work. I appreciated the themes 'Earning the Rockies' addresses more as the conclusion of a conversation started in Kaplan's earlier works (and continued by his numerous critics).
  
• 
  Chris

  An introspective and personal reflection on geography and American exceptionalism. Reminded me of a modern Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." Kaplan introduces us to his father, a bus driver, who took him on road trips through the East Coast. Now Kaplan is on the road in 2015 reflecting on America then and now. He introduces us to Bernard DeVoto, Wallace Stegner, and Walter Prescott Webb, among other chroniclers of American history and geography. Kaplan maintains that our unique geography and frontier experience mandates our role as a world power. He talks of the role of the individual and the role of community and how the the Great American Desert militated individualism. It's deep thoughts and when he finally reaches San Diego in sight of the Navy's ships he embarks on more thoughts about our role in the world with a discussion of imperialism. Humanitarianism could be considered imperialism. Democracy and human rights have replaced Christianity as the new flag to rally around. It's thought provoking with its foreign policy observations as well as the personal experience and observations of being a fly on the wall in dying and prospering towns along the route.
• 
  Jonas

  “Wie wil weten hoe machtig een land is, moet beginnen met een analyse van de geografie”, aldus Robert D. Kaplan. Dat is ook precies wat de auteur beoogde met zijn boek De verovering van de Rockies. Het eindresultaat is een ge(s)laagde mix geworden: deels memoire, deels reisverhaal, deels geopolitiek pamflet.
  
  Kaplan is niet de eerste de beste. De man is niet enkel bekend als journalist en bestsellerauteur, het is ook een befaamd politiek strateeg die al advies verleende aan het Pentagon en het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie. Kaplan is vlot van de tongriem gesneden en schuwt de controverse niet, maar als hij spreekt spitst menig politicus de oren.
  
  De verovering van de Rockies begint in Kaplans jeugd. Aangevuurd door de verhalen van zijn vader, een vrachtwagenchauffeur die het hele land doorkruiste, besluit hij om hetzelfde te doen. Hij begint aan de westkust in Massachusetts en rijdt per auto naar Californië aan de oostkust. Hij houdt halt in wegkwijnende dorpjes maar ook bij toeristische trekpleisters als Mount Rushmore.
  
  Tijdens deze roadtrip wil hij de bijbelse proporties van het land opnieuw ontdekken en voelen wat er leeft onder de mensen. Maar bovenal wil hij met een beschrijving van het landschap uiteenzetten hoe de geografie van continentaal Amerika een allesbepalende factor is geweest in de lotsbestemming van de Verenigde Staten.
  
  Kaplan betoogt dat de Amerikaanse expansie naar het Westen, over de Great Plains en voorbij de Rocky Mountains, een cruciale rol heeft gespeeld in de ontwikkeling van het Amerikaanse karakter. Om dat punt te maken, gaat hij een boude stelling links of rechts niet uit de weg. Zo stelt hij onomwonden dat de eenzame, angstaanjagende vlakten een zekere mate van risicovol gedrag stimuleerden, volgens Kaplan nog steeds een fundamenteel kenmerk van de Amerikaanse persoonlijkheid.
  
  Hoe dan ook, door de verovering van eindeloos uitgestrekte lappen grond kreeg in Amerikaanse geesten het idee vorm dat de Verenigde Staten een missie in de wereld hadden: het geloof in een Manifest Destiny. De unieke geografie van continentaal Amerika heeft er volgens Kaplan voor gezorgd dat de VS ongeziene macht konden verwerven. Een gunstige ligging, diepe havens, bosrijke en vruchtbare grond vol bodemschatten en een netwerk van bevaarbare binnenwateren hebben van de VS in sneltempo een economische en militaire wereldmacht gemaakt.
  
  Dit alles bracht niet enkel een sterk nationaal bewustzijn met zich mee, maar ook een bepaalde verantwoordelijkheidszin. Volgens Kaplan zijn de VS het aan de rest van de wereld verschuldigd om het broze mondiale machtsevenwicht te bewaren. Met hun vloot bewaken ze de wereldzeeën en via NAVO houden ze de Russen uit Europa. Niet omdat ze dat zo graag willen, maar omdat hun natuurlijke dominantie hen daartoe veroordeeld heeft. Kaplan geeft toe dat de invasie van Irak een blunder was (hoewel hij er destijds zelf voorstander van was) maar betoogt dat Amerika niet anders kan dan een internationale militaire rol te blijven spelen.
  
  De verovering van de Rockies is een interessant en onderhoudend boek. Het telt slechts een kleine 200 pagina’s maar staat bol van de scherpe observaties. De stellingen van Kaplan zijn weliswaar onomwonden en af en toe besluipt je het gevoel dat zijn beweringen niet altijd even onderbouwd zijn. Los daarvan: de auteur geeft je een hoogst originele kijk op de Verenigde Staten en de rol die het land speelt in de wereld. Kaplan is een vlotte verteller, al wordt zijn betoog nu en dan wat drammerig. Vooral het laatste hoofdstuk leest meer als een politiek pamflet en lijkt weggelopen uit een ander boek.
  
  Lees de volledige recensie:
  https://vreemderdanfictie.be/2017/06/...
• 
  Kristy Miller

  Part travelogue, part history and geography lesson, part political philosophy. Kaplan drives across the country, observing small, often dying towns across the country, and discusses how the geography of the United States has impacted our philosophy and approach to international politics. He discusses slavery, Native American issues related to western expansion, empire and imperialism, the role of the American military in world politics, and American exceptionalism.
  
  There are some interesting parts of this book. I think if he had focused more on the travelogue part and talked to people in small towns instead of making assumptions it would have been a better, if very different book. I don’t think his world political analysis holds up in a world with Trump as President*. I also think his discussion of imperialism is naive at best, if not willfully ignorant or blind. I do think the geography of the United State has shaped much of our history and attitude, but it is the history part of this that makes sense, and not his application of it modern politics.
  
• 
  Noel O.

  This book was a semi difficult read. It was an ode to exploration and it’s challenges, consequences, and benefits. The author makes a case, almost as if for a dissertation, on the good and the bad on American attitudes toward exploration, militarianism, nationalism, among many other isms. The author attempts to create a mirror reflection of the politics of America and how it’s geography and history have helped shape and further the ideals that split the nation now. The labels and observations he makes can easily be misconstrued, since they seem like stereotypical ideas that have been heard Time and again to describe the problems within America. However, if an open mind is kept and the reader can understand that Kaplan intended to write from a Scientific observation perspective as he recreated a road trip from East to West America; perhaps, his tone will become seem less mocking and more attempting to reflect realistically what he perceives throughout his journey.
• 
  Katie

  Very confusing book. The structure of it caused me to struggle. Chapter 1 - memoir. Chapter 2 - historical biography (or something of the sort). Chapters 3-4 - geography, history, and political science. It wasn't until I watched the PBS News Hour interview with the author did I get a sense of what this book was really about.
  
  That said. Although I spent most of the time reading this book a bit befuddled, I found snippets here and there enlightening or thought provoking. I'm still digesting his perspective, but for the first time, I've thought about how geography influences domestic and foreign policy, and how the frontier experience or domestic expansion/imperialism frames the US up to be internationally imperialist while at the same time rejecting that label.