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The Course of Empire ReviewOccasionally, 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 Columbia River, and the exploration of the region.
Although this is the third book in the trilogy of history books DeVoto wrote on the American West, this is the one that should be read first. Both ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI and YEAR OF DECISION: 1846 will be enriched by having read this one first. I heartily recommend that anyone with any interest in American history read this. For those especially interested in the American West, it is nothing short of essential.The Course of Empire Overview
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