What do you think?
Rate this book
America, América: A New History of the New World
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the first comprehensive history of the Western hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both
The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe. But as Greg Grandin vividly demonstrates, the nation’s unique sense of itself was in fact forged facing south—no less than Latin America’s was indelibly stamped by the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World Grandin reveals how North and South emerged from a constant, turbulent engagement with each other.
America, América traverses half a millennium, from the Spanish Conquest—the greatest mortality event in human history—through the eighteenth-century wars for independence, the Monroe Doctrine, the coups and revolutions of the twentieth century, and beyond. Grandin shows, among other things, how royalist Spanish America, by sending troops and supplies, helped save the republican American Revolution; how in response to U.S. interventions, Latin Americans remade the rules, leading directly to the founding of the United Nations; and how the Good Neighbor Policy allowed FDR to assume the moral authority to lead the fight against world fascism.
Grandin’s book sheds new light on well-known historical figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as lesser-known actors such as the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who almost lost his head in the French Revolution and conspired with Alexander Hamilton to free America from Spain; the Colombian Jorge Gaitán, whose unsolved murder inaugurated the rise of Cold War political terror, death squads, and disappearances; and the radical journalist Ernest Gruening, who in championing non-interventionism in Latin America, helped broker the most spectacularly successful policy reversal in United State history. This is a monumental work of scholarship that will fundamentally change the way we think of slavery and racism, the rise of universal humanism, and the role of social democracy in staving off extremism. At once comprehensive and accessible, America, América shows that centuries of bloodshed and diplomacy not only helped shape the political identities of the United States and Latin America but also the laws, institutions, and ideals that govern the modern world.
A culmination of a decades-long engagement with hemispheric history, drawing on a vast array of sources, and told with authority and flair, this is a genuinely new history of the New World.
The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe. But as Greg Grandin vividly demonstrates, the nation’s unique sense of itself was in fact forged facing south—no less than Latin America’s was indelibly stamped by the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World Grandin reveals how North and South emerged from a constant, turbulent engagement with each other.
America, América traverses half a millennium, from the Spanish Conquest—the greatest mortality event in human history—through the eighteenth-century wars for independence, the Monroe Doctrine, the coups and revolutions of the twentieth century, and beyond. Grandin shows, among other things, how royalist Spanish America, by sending troops and supplies, helped save the republican American Revolution; how in response to U.S. interventions, Latin Americans remade the rules, leading directly to the founding of the United Nations; and how the Good Neighbor Policy allowed FDR to assume the moral authority to lead the fight against world fascism.
Grandin’s book sheds new light on well-known historical figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as lesser-known actors such as the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who almost lost his head in the French Revolution and conspired with Alexander Hamilton to free America from Spain; the Colombian Jorge Gaitán, whose unsolved murder inaugurated the rise of Cold War political terror, death squads, and disappearances; and the radical journalist Ernest Gruening, who in championing non-interventionism in Latin America, helped broker the most spectacularly successful policy reversal in United State history. This is a monumental work of scholarship that will fundamentally change the way we think of slavery and racism, the rise of universal humanism, and the role of social democracy in staving off extremism. At once comprehensive and accessible, America, América shows that centuries of bloodshed and diplomacy not only helped shape the political identities of the United States and Latin America but also the laws, institutions, and ideals that govern the modern world.
A culmination of a decades-long engagement with hemispheric history, drawing on a vast array of sources, and told with authority and flair, this is a genuinely new history of the New World.
768 pages, Paperback
First published April 22, 2025
695 people are currently reading
6498 people want to read
About the author
Greg Grandin
26 books552 followersGreg Grandin is the author of Fordlandia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A Professor of History at New York University, Grandin has published a number of other award-winning books, including Empire's Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and The Blood of Guatemala.
Toni Morrison called Grandin's new work, The Empire of Necessity, "compelling, brilliant and necessary." Based on years of research on four continents, the book narrates the history of a slave-ship revolt that inspired Herman Melville's other masterpiece, Benito Cereno. Philip Gourevitch describes it as a "rare book in which the drama of the action and the drama of ideas are equally measured, a work of history and of literary reflection that is as urgent as it is timely."
Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times.
He received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, in 1992 and his PhD from Yale in 1999. He has been a guest on Democracy Now!, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Chris Hayes Show.
Toni Morrison called Grandin's new work, The Empire of Necessity, "compelling, brilliant and necessary." Based on years of research on four continents, the book narrates the history of a slave-ship revolt that inspired Herman Melville's other masterpiece, Benito Cereno. Philip Gourevitch describes it as a "rare book in which the drama of the action and the drama of ideas are equally measured, a work of history and of literary reflection that is as urgent as it is timely."
Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times.
He received his BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY, in 1992 and his PhD from Yale in 1999. He has been a guest on Democracy Now!, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Chris Hayes Show.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
May 15, 2025
America, América is one of the most ambitious historical works I’ve read in years. With meticulous and analytic precision, Greg Grandin reorients our view of the Western Hemisphere by insisting that “America” is not just a nation, but an imperial project shaped through constant entanglement with Latin America. This book doesn’t just chart U.S. interventions abroad; it interrogates the consolidation of American identity as always dependent on domination, extraction, and repression across the hemisphere.
Grandin connects the dots between ideology and economy, between the soaring rhetoric of liberty and the sordid machinery of conquest. His analysis of U.S. imperialism’s extractive logic echoes strongly with Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. Grandin meticulously details how, from the Monroe Doctrine to Cold War coups and into the neoliberal era, the U.S. pursued access to labor, raw materials, and markets - not as aberrations, but as structural imperatives of its rise. In one section, Grandin writes that “expansion and exploitation were not reactions to crisis but constitutive of what the United States is.” This dovetails with Galeano’s analysis: “The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.” Both Grandin and Galeano insist that to understand the present, we must reckon with the centuries of plunder and structural violence that defined hemispheric relations.
Still, Grandin’s regional framing raises important questions. While his emphasis on the Americas is historically and politically generative, it can also obscure the global dynamics that shaped the very structures he describes. This is where Gerald Horne’s body of work, and in particular The Counter-Revolution of 1776, provides a necessary expansion. He writes, “The revolt of the mainland colonies was driven in no small part by the fear that London would strike a blow against the enslavement of Africans.” Horne reminds us that “London had begun to move, ever so haltingly, toward abolition, and the settlers feared their property in human beings was in jeopardy.” The American Revolution was not simply an ideological rupture but a counterrevolutionary defense of slavery and settler capitalism against British abolitionism and imperial restructuring. By decentering Britain and Europe, Grandin’s hemispheric focus can inadvertently mystify the deeper global structures of empire. If Grandin shows how U.S. identity is built through its actions in Latin America, Horne reminds us that this identity was forged in the crucible of global capitalism, colonial rivalry, and racial slavery — centered as much in London and West Africa as in Virginia or Veracruz.
Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History also complicates Grandin’s narrative in productive ways. Grandin often critiques liberal ideology for masking violence, but Losurdo digs deeper, showing that liberalism emerged historically not in opposition to hierarchy, but alongside — and often in service of — systems of domination. “Far from being the ideology of universal freedom,” Losurdo writes, “liberalism was the self-conscious ideology of a historically determined form of class rule.” Grandin gestures toward this contradiction but stops short of fully theorizing it. As a result, his critique sometimes veers toward moral disillusionment rather than material analysis — liberalism as betrayal rather than liberalism as structural logic.
Grandin’s ability to trace ideological continuities, from 19th-century expansionism through Cold War containment and into the current architecture of border militarization—is one of the book’s major achievements. His narrative threads together U.S. interventions abroad and the shaping of domestic political imaginaries, showing how violence directed outward often returns home in transformed, institutionalized forms. His discussion of counterinsurgency tactics developed in Latin America and later adapted for use within U.S. policing and border enforcement is particularly compelling, even if his characterization of the hemisphere's bastions of socialist achievement and anti-imperialist resistance - namely Cuba and Venezuela - are reluctantly acknowledged if not outright ignored.
Nonetheless, America, América is a landmark work. It synthesizes centuries of conflict, hope, and struggle into a coherent narrative that centers Latin America not as a peripheral stage, but as central to the making of U.S. power. Grandin’s writing is elegant, his archival work impeccable, and his political commitments clear. Still, I recommend reading it alongside Horne, Losurdo, and Galeano. Where Grandin shows us the architecture of empire, they illuminate its foundations. Together, they offer a more complete vision of the long and unfinished history of resistance in the Americas.
Grandin connects the dots between ideology and economy, between the soaring rhetoric of liberty and the sordid machinery of conquest. His analysis of U.S. imperialism’s extractive logic echoes strongly with Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. Grandin meticulously details how, from the Monroe Doctrine to Cold War coups and into the neoliberal era, the U.S. pursued access to labor, raw materials, and markets - not as aberrations, but as structural imperatives of its rise. In one section, Grandin writes that “expansion and exploitation were not reactions to crisis but constitutive of what the United States is.” This dovetails with Galeano’s analysis: “The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.” Both Grandin and Galeano insist that to understand the present, we must reckon with the centuries of plunder and structural violence that defined hemispheric relations.
Still, Grandin’s regional framing raises important questions. While his emphasis on the Americas is historically and politically generative, it can also obscure the global dynamics that shaped the very structures he describes. This is where Gerald Horne’s body of work, and in particular The Counter-Revolution of 1776, provides a necessary expansion. He writes, “The revolt of the mainland colonies was driven in no small part by the fear that London would strike a blow against the enslavement of Africans.” Horne reminds us that “London had begun to move, ever so haltingly, toward abolition, and the settlers feared their property in human beings was in jeopardy.” The American Revolution was not simply an ideological rupture but a counterrevolutionary defense of slavery and settler capitalism against British abolitionism and imperial restructuring. By decentering Britain and Europe, Grandin’s hemispheric focus can inadvertently mystify the deeper global structures of empire. If Grandin shows how U.S. identity is built through its actions in Latin America, Horne reminds us that this identity was forged in the crucible of global capitalism, colonial rivalry, and racial slavery — centered as much in London and West Africa as in Virginia or Veracruz.
Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History also complicates Grandin’s narrative in productive ways. Grandin often critiques liberal ideology for masking violence, but Losurdo digs deeper, showing that liberalism emerged historically not in opposition to hierarchy, but alongside — and often in service of — systems of domination. “Far from being the ideology of universal freedom,” Losurdo writes, “liberalism was the self-conscious ideology of a historically determined form of class rule.” Grandin gestures toward this contradiction but stops short of fully theorizing it. As a result, his critique sometimes veers toward moral disillusionment rather than material analysis — liberalism as betrayal rather than liberalism as structural logic.
Grandin’s ability to trace ideological continuities, from 19th-century expansionism through Cold War containment and into the current architecture of border militarization—is one of the book’s major achievements. His narrative threads together U.S. interventions abroad and the shaping of domestic political imaginaries, showing how violence directed outward often returns home in transformed, institutionalized forms. His discussion of counterinsurgency tactics developed in Latin America and later adapted for use within U.S. policing and border enforcement is particularly compelling, even if his characterization of the hemisphere's bastions of socialist achievement and anti-imperialist resistance - namely Cuba and Venezuela - are reluctantly acknowledged if not outright ignored.
Nonetheless, America, América is a landmark work. It synthesizes centuries of conflict, hope, and struggle into a coherent narrative that centers Latin America not as a peripheral stage, but as central to the making of U.S. power. Grandin’s writing is elegant, his archival work impeccable, and his political commitments clear. Still, I recommend reading it alongside Horne, Losurdo, and Galeano. Where Grandin shows us the architecture of empire, they illuminate its foundations. Together, they offer a more complete vision of the long and unfinished history of resistance in the Americas.
May 26, 2025
4.75 EPIC, masterful, academic and yes, occasionally challenging. Heck it's a lot of info and you need to find a reading rhythm and focus BUT, it reveals it's grandeur and impact with each decade detailed, as the passions and policies of the myriad characters are revealed, and intertwine. I learned soooooooo much! The further along I got the more this book makes history sing.
Names that previously only brought to mind hot sauce, or had been associated with simplistic, heroic narratives (FDR), were... deepened.? Monroe Doctrine, yeah I vaguely remembered that but now it holds a place of value in my memory. This is the history book that I wish I had read when I was younger, though I fear given the current political nightmare in the US this book will be viewed as too culturally threatening(?) to good old Merican values and be removed. I truly hope the opposite is the case; that it is read, discussed and debated widely.
A central revelation for me was how unique the core philosophy and goals of policy makers in Latin American nations seemed to have been, and while they have gradually evolved they stayed true to a central theme - a global vision of humanity and cooperation. In contrast to all other previous and existing nations, "Spanish American revolutionaries sought to build a community of nations without colonies or empires, dedicated to an idealistic conception of how the world SHOULD be ordered.". I also better comprehend why this was/is the case based on the contrasting histories of... development on each region.
I've traveled and lived in many countries in South and Central America and read numerous history books, but none have provided such a glorious and impactful overview. I thought I knew about folks like Bartolome de las Casas and the Sandinistas but this book connects all the dots, plus it introduced me to so many incredible individuals, from Jorge Gaitán to Henry Wallace, though I wish there had been more woman included.
This exchange between Mexican President Victoria (I previously only associated name w/ hot sauce) and US Ambassador to Spain Everett, when Victoria refers to North America as "The United States of the North" and tells Everett "We are all Americans.". Victoria is corrected by Everett: "Moreover, Everett was also bothered by Mexico's official name, Estados Unidos Mexicanos. He felt that Estados Unidos, or, in English, the United States, was proprietary to his country, the United States of America. Mexicans were both plagiarists and thieves, "borrowing one half our name" only "to rob us of the other." Wow! Gulf of America anyone?
Much of what I learned from this book is unfortunately still relevant today - the manner which smaller/less powerful countries are marginalized at COP is the same as the treatment received throughout most of the history this book recounts. "Great powers, wrote the London Times, "will not, and can not, in any circumstances" allow small states "to have an equal right with them-selves in laying down the law." To elevate small states to equal status of great ones "would involve the subjugation of the higher civilization by the lower," and "condemn the more advanced peoples to moral and intellectual regression."
This is a hell of a read and despite the dense nature of the subject it's well worth your time. Certainly I shall forget many of the details but I'll long appreciate and recall how I better understand the amazing relationship and influences between the regions.
But... I need to warn you that the epilogue is not for the faint hearted. Mr Grandin had me choked up as a result of his clean, factual and by necessity scathing summation of the current state of the world. While I was reading this book I often reflected on how I hoped that today's current politicians would read and learn the lessons within because despite the often distressing history related and our current state of affairs this is ultimately a positive book - but heck, isn't every great history book a positive book because they offer the opportunity to learn from our choices. I remain a pragmatic optimist and deeply inspired by the authors spectacular history. Thank you Greg!
PS. This is definitely the sort of book that would have benefited immensely with the inclusion of maps that illustrate the shifting borders, along with a timeline that perhaps highlights significant world events for each chapter/section. Of course I love those sorts of items on history books and find them super helpful to reference for context.
Names that previously only brought to mind hot sauce, or had been associated with simplistic, heroic narratives (FDR), were... deepened.? Monroe Doctrine, yeah I vaguely remembered that but now it holds a place of value in my memory. This is the history book that I wish I had read when I was younger, though I fear given the current political nightmare in the US this book will be viewed as too culturally threatening(?) to good old Merican values and be removed. I truly hope the opposite is the case; that it is read, discussed and debated widely.
A central revelation for me was how unique the core philosophy and goals of policy makers in Latin American nations seemed to have been, and while they have gradually evolved they stayed true to a central theme - a global vision of humanity and cooperation. In contrast to all other previous and existing nations, "Spanish American revolutionaries sought to build a community of nations without colonies or empires, dedicated to an idealistic conception of how the world SHOULD be ordered.". I also better comprehend why this was/is the case based on the contrasting histories of... development on each region.
I've traveled and lived in many countries in South and Central America and read numerous history books, but none have provided such a glorious and impactful overview. I thought I knew about folks like Bartolome de las Casas and the Sandinistas but this book connects all the dots, plus it introduced me to so many incredible individuals, from Jorge Gaitán to Henry Wallace, though I wish there had been more woman included.
This exchange between Mexican President Victoria (I previously only associated name w/ hot sauce) and US Ambassador to Spain Everett, when Victoria refers to North America as "The United States of the North" and tells Everett "We are all Americans.". Victoria is corrected by Everett: "Moreover, Everett was also bothered by Mexico's official name, Estados Unidos Mexicanos. He felt that Estados Unidos, or, in English, the United States, was proprietary to his country, the United States of America. Mexicans were both plagiarists and thieves, "borrowing one half our name" only "to rob us of the other." Wow! Gulf of America anyone?
Much of what I learned from this book is unfortunately still relevant today - the manner which smaller/less powerful countries are marginalized at COP is the same as the treatment received throughout most of the history this book recounts. "Great powers, wrote the London Times, "will not, and can not, in any circumstances" allow small states "to have an equal right with them-selves in laying down the law." To elevate small states to equal status of great ones "would involve the subjugation of the higher civilization by the lower," and "condemn the more advanced peoples to moral and intellectual regression."
This is a hell of a read and despite the dense nature of the subject it's well worth your time. Certainly I shall forget many of the details but I'll long appreciate and recall how I better understand the amazing relationship and influences between the regions.
But... I need to warn you that the epilogue is not for the faint hearted. Mr Grandin had me choked up as a result of his clean, factual and by necessity scathing summation of the current state of the world. While I was reading this book I often reflected on how I hoped that today's current politicians would read and learn the lessons within because despite the often distressing history related and our current state of affairs this is ultimately a positive book - but heck, isn't every great history book a positive book because they offer the opportunity to learn from our choices. I remain a pragmatic optimist and deeply inspired by the authors spectacular history. Thank you Greg!
PS. This is definitely the sort of book that would have benefited immensely with the inclusion of maps that illustrate the shifting borders, along with a timeline that perhaps highlights significant world events for each chapter/section. Of course I love those sorts of items on history books and find them super helpful to reference for context.
October 12, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️ — America, America by Greg Grandin
This was an epic history book in every sense of the word. Greg Grandin is an incredible historian who has a gift for exposing the seedy underbelly of the Western Hemisphere — from the exploitation that built empires to the myths that keep them intact.
As a young man, I cut my teeth on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and I was hoping for more of the same spirit here — a sweeping, people-centered narrative that challenges traditional history. In many ways, that’s exactly what I got. Grandin takes a massive swing at retelling the history of the Americas through the lens of inequality, imperial ambition, and moral contradiction.
That said, America, America is a massive undertaking — over 700 pages — and it often feels like it. The book is deeply researched and full of insight, but at times it’s bloated and overly sentimental. I found myself drifting in and out, impressed by Grandin’s intellect but wishing for a bit more narrative focus.
I’m glad I stuck with it, though. Grandin’s perspective is vital and illuminating, even when the prose gets heavy. This is a book I respect more than I loved. For readers who enjoy Zinn-style revisionist people centered history and don’t mind a long, winding journey, it’s worth the commitment.
This was an epic history book in every sense of the word. Greg Grandin is an incredible historian who has a gift for exposing the seedy underbelly of the Western Hemisphere — from the exploitation that built empires to the myths that keep them intact.
As a young man, I cut my teeth on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and I was hoping for more of the same spirit here — a sweeping, people-centered narrative that challenges traditional history. In many ways, that’s exactly what I got. Grandin takes a massive swing at retelling the history of the Americas through the lens of inequality, imperial ambition, and moral contradiction.
That said, America, America is a massive undertaking — over 700 pages — and it often feels like it. The book is deeply researched and full of insight, but at times it’s bloated and overly sentimental. I found myself drifting in and out, impressed by Grandin’s intellect but wishing for a bit more narrative focus.
I’m glad I stuck with it, though. Grandin’s perspective is vital and illuminating, even when the prose gets heavy. This is a book I respect more than I loved. For readers who enjoy Zinn-style revisionist people centered history and don’t mind a long, winding journey, it’s worth the commitment.
August 3, 2025
A really fresh approach to the history of the Americas. Of course, there’s not enough time to cover everything, so the author focuses on colonialism, racism, and diplomacy.
May 24, 2025
While it is illuminating, it is terribly one sided. His héroes are the far left, Allende, petro, the Sandinistas, not the Center left, Frei, the Concertación, Betancourt, Figueres. Fernando Enrique Cardodo. And deendency theory and Prebisch's call for import sundtotution no longer taken seriously ny the center left (social demócrats). Moreover, he praises Latín American cpnstitutions, for their high ideals failing to explain why they are so weak in practise.
April 21, 2025
*Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC of this book*
This book, no this tome, is worth every page. In his usual propulsive writing style, Grandin takes us on a centuries long look at the different ways North America and South America have worked together and how they have moved ideologically apart.
From the conquest to the 2024 electoral results, there is little of hemispheric history that Grandin does not evaluate. While this is a long work, it is a cohesive examination of this geographic area concerning the idea of what it means when we say 'America' and the ways the Americas have and have not changed since their founding.
Another excellent work by Grandin with insightful ideas and a South American focus that is often missed in the analysis of what 'America' was, is, and can be.
This book, no this tome, is worth every page. In his usual propulsive writing style, Grandin takes us on a centuries long look at the different ways North America and South America have worked together and how they have moved ideologically apart.
From the conquest to the 2024 electoral results, there is little of hemispheric history that Grandin does not evaluate. While this is a long work, it is a cohesive examination of this geographic area concerning the idea of what it means when we say 'America' and the ways the Americas have and have not changed since their founding.
Another excellent work by Grandin with insightful ideas and a South American focus that is often missed in the analysis of what 'America' was, is, and can be.
June 22, 2025
I still remember being chastised in Spain when I referred to myself as an American instead of a North American. The memory remained with me when Pope Leo XII was referred to as the first American pope (what about the Argentinian Francis?). Along with thinking of ourselves as "America", present-day US attention is largely focused across the oceans towards Europe and Asia. With a few exceptions (e.g. Mexican-American war, Panama Canal), the US history we are taught in school drops our neighbors to the south once Columbus, Cortez and Pizzaro have left the scene.
Greg Grandin's America, América filled many gaps in my knowledge about our neighbors to the south and the inextricable links between the US and Latin America. Grandin's big thesis is that Latin America has been as big a source of ideas regarding revolution, governance, treatment of indigenous, emancipation, racial equality and the relations between nations as has the US. The early Spanish debates regarding the indigenous were particularly interesting.
It seems that US relations with Latin America have always involved a battle between the uplifters and the exploiters, with the exploiters usually winning out. Major exceptions were the Wilson and FDR administrations when our southern neighbors were given freer reign to develop policies that went against powerful moneyed interests of the US. While the advocates of these policies seemed to be true altruists, it also appears they were only able to win out because of the US need for support in two world wars.
The postwar era was particularly dark as brutal right-wing regimes were allowed free reign to suppress the entire left including social Democrats in the name of anti-Communism. Grandin pays particular attention to Colombia; it makes me want to read more Marquez now that I have some context. The role of the Catholic Church here is also interesting, with priests on the ground favoring liberation theology despite a hostile hierarchy. John Paul II and Benedict fiercely opposed these priests, but Francis (who of course is Argentinian) showed more sympathy. In some sense, Leo XIV's service to the poor in Peru makes him the second Latin American pope; it will be interesting to see how this Pope, who in some sense represents both America and América, balances religion and social justice.
This is definitely a noteworthy read that will significantly broaden most US reader's knowledge of our hemisphere. Thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for providing a pre-release ebook for early review.
Greg Grandin's America, América filled many gaps in my knowledge about our neighbors to the south and the inextricable links between the US and Latin America. Grandin's big thesis is that Latin America has been as big a source of ideas regarding revolution, governance, treatment of indigenous, emancipation, racial equality and the relations between nations as has the US. The early Spanish debates regarding the indigenous were particularly interesting.
It seems that US relations with Latin America have always involved a battle between the uplifters and the exploiters, with the exploiters usually winning out. Major exceptions were the Wilson and FDR administrations when our southern neighbors were given freer reign to develop policies that went against powerful moneyed interests of the US. While the advocates of these policies seemed to be true altruists, it also appears they were only able to win out because of the US need for support in two world wars.
The postwar era was particularly dark as brutal right-wing regimes were allowed free reign to suppress the entire left including social Democrats in the name of anti-Communism. Grandin pays particular attention to Colombia; it makes me want to read more Marquez now that I have some context. The role of the Catholic Church here is also interesting, with priests on the ground favoring liberation theology despite a hostile hierarchy. John Paul II and Benedict fiercely opposed these priests, but Francis (who of course is Argentinian) showed more sympathy. In some sense, Leo XIV's service to the poor in Peru makes him the second Latin American pope; it will be interesting to see how this Pope, who in some sense represents both America and América, balances religion and social justice.
This is definitely a noteworthy read that will significantly broaden most US reader's knowledge of our hemisphere. Thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for providing a pre-release ebook for early review.
January 3, 2026
Jan 3: Always relevant! long live the Monroe doctrine!
Ambitious (and lefty) overview of American history from the perspective of thinkers and revolutionaries in Latin America.
Ambitious (and lefty) overview of American history from the perspective of thinkers and revolutionaries in Latin America.
January 1, 2026
When Cortes began his “assault on the Aztec Empire” in 1519, Mexico had a population of between 15 to 30 million indigenous people – by 1600, its population was down to 2 million.
In 1614, Captain John Smith records fields of planted corn, gardens overflowing w/ mulberries and lots of nutritious acorns and “forty well-organized villages.” Others found “squash, pumpkins, tobacco, corn, bean, berries and other fruit all planted in cultivated fields” and the largest flocks of “fowl we have ever seen.” In 1500, when London’s population was 50,000, Mexico City was three times that size. London then grew so much that the pressure was on to send “surplus” peoples to England’s colonies in an early Brit version of lebensraum. Both in Mexico and Ireland massacre followed massacre including the slaughtering of women, children and the elderly (once the men fled or were killed). In Ireland, Sir Gilbert had the heads cut off the Irish corpses and placed them in rows along the path Irish petitioners must take to “passe through a line of heddes.” In 1582-1583 (Munster) and 1602-1603 (Ulster) the Brits deliberately starved the Irish into submission. Even today those “civilized” Brits are still financing deliberate starvation (Gaza, anyone?) after starving millions of Iranians in WWI (see Mohammad Gholi Majd book), and millions of Indians during the Bengal Famine. Given the quality of British cuisine, I’m surprised the Brits aren’t starving themselves as well.
Sir Arthur Chichester in 1600 reported seeing in a British colony “three small children – the least not above ten years old – feeding off the flesh of their starved mother.” If that doesn’t lead you to sing Rule Britannia, what will? Many England saw Irish Catholics allied with Catholic Spain and its abuses (“Popish cruelties” and “slaughter’d Indians”) in Latin America. Much better for physical abuses to come from Protestant hands than Catholic; “Calm down! You are being raped and starved by a Protestant and not by a Catholic, so stop whining!” Captain John Smith was hoping to find indigenous to “exploit for tribute and labor” and force to bring them food. “Captain Smith modeled himself on Cortes” and the motto on his coat arms was “vincere est vivere” (to conquer is to live). You can’t get more Christian than that! Ha ha…
Spain had Las Casas (the famed indigenous defender who believed Christ spoke through the persecuted) as a countervailing moral force. But the author found that England apparently had no voice who championed the non-violent teachings of Las Casas let alone the Ten Commandments, or Sermon on the Mount - or spent time questioning the morality of settlement. The 1622 Powatan Massacre of settlers in Jamestown was treated just like October 7th, 2023 in Israel – as rationale for wanton destruction and subjugation by the chosen whites (including invasion) to “destroy them who sought to destroy us.” [“How dare you resist us taking your land?”] In 1637, Captains John Mason and John Underhill entered the native town of Mystic Connecticut while its braves were out getting supplies, and then “burned hundreds of (native) people they found huddled in a roundhouse, mostly women, children, and the elderly”. While burning children to death today [even captured in gruesome detail on video] these days isn’t considered remotely newsworthy or even immoral, the Mystic Massacre has long shocked US history buffs from the comfort of the past – “thank God we never reflect on our own complicity today” shouts the indoctrinated chorus of Rachel Maddow trained US liberals.
Don’t forget Boston was once happily a slave port, and Rhode Island mansions and its wealth came from Newport being the largest slave port in North America and Rhode Island itself had 25-30 large scale slave plantations. Oops… Many indentured servants of the time arriving in New England fled into the countryside as soon as they saw the upcoming years of drudgery ahead, and some of them soon lived among the Wampanoag. If you look at the Caribbean during this time, you’ll notice the Brits were no better than the Spanish and were mostly “raiders, slavers, and kidnappers.” David Hume in 1753 said, “There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white.” The author says in total the Brits with their “ships took more than three million people from Africa.” Hume would no doubt have called that “civilized”. Massachusetts was the first colony to say yes to slavery, followed in order by Connecticut, Virginia, New York and New Jersey. I picture Nancy Reagan’s ancestors back then holding up placards saying, “Sayeth Thou Yes to Slavery”. This book shows (p. 133) how we won the American Revolution because France and Spain in an early form of GoFundMe “gave the rebels the up-to-date weapons (to replace primitive colonial rifles used for hunting rabbits) that allowed for their unexpected victory at Saratoga in late 1777.” Independence leaders in Mexico at this time read Diderot, Rousseau and Las Casas. Today’s US readers in contrast appear to limit their “reading” to laminated menus and narrow bandwidth red-blue diatribes.
Did you know Andrew Jackson in 1789 put his hand on a bible when he was a slave trader and as an American pledged loyalty to Spain (p.146)? In contrast, today’s US presidents no longer need a bible to pledge loyalty to Israel. Viva La Difference! In 1802, Spain gave New Orleans and Louisiana (828,000 sq. miles) to France in return for the Italian kingdom of Etruria. A year later France sold the former to the US. Chattel slavery was a big reason the US expanded to the West Coast with settlers leading the way. Alexander Hamilton was into breaking Spanish America away from Spain big time (Francisco de Miranda’s plan). Thomas Jefferson, not known for his math skills, said that the US would soon have over a billion inhabitants. Spanish America’s first republic was Venezuela in 1811. Bolivar helped create Gran Columbia which existed from 1819 to 1831. Mexico had been part of The United Provinces of Central America but became independent in 1821, along with Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica. These new Spanish Republics then went from exporting silver to Spain to exporting silver to England to pay it back for help freeing themselves from Spain. “Not one Spanish American republic in the decades after independence could keep up with interest payments.” “The United States also won its independence on borrowed money.”
The conservative impulse to shrink government was apparent decades before the Civil War because slavers needed the executive branch constrained. This meant stopping ANY attempt to strengthen the federal government. “The Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans gave way to the Whigs and the Democrats.” But what did people say before they said, “Don’t make a federal case about it?” Did you know that a war between Brazil and Argentina led to the birth of Uruguay? Gran Columbia became present day Panama, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, and part of Peru and Brazil. The author says, “racial frontier violence was never as central a component of national identity for Spanish America and Brazil as it was for the United States.” Lincoln once told a delegation of freemen many reasons why the “two races on this continent” couldn’t live together adding, “it is better for us both, to be separated.” That’s not exactly the Lincoln we were taught in school. Instead of bringing democracy to other countries, “Marines landed in Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, and Honduras for short periods, and occupied Nicaragua (1927-1932), Haiti (1915-1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) for decades” fighting those “who didn’t want them there.” All this after the US annexed Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii and Guam and part of Panama. At the time the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, US investors owned “nearly half of all Mexican property value.” Not exactly bloodless, the Mexican Revolution ended up killing three to four million Mexicans out of a population of fifteen million. Many US officials in Woodrow Wilson’s administration owned property in Mexico, leading a top historian to call the Mexican Revolution the “first great third world uprising against American economic, cultural and political expansion.” At this time Mexico “was pumping more petroleum than any other country in the world.” We couldn’t have that NOT benefit first the US.
Henry Ford’s Model T’s got 20 miles per gallon. By 1970, the average US fuel economy was down to 12 mpg. Ah, American ingenuity. The US didn’t bother to raise that fuel number to equal Henry Ford’s 20 mpg until the late 1980’s. Dupont got its start selling gunpowder to US leaders to better kill Native Americans and then diversified into gunpowder to better steal land from Mexico. Dupont’s eventual motto “Better Things for Better Living” was an improvement over the original “Helping Whites Better Steal and Kill Since 1802.” The US pretended that its Monroe Doctrine “was international law.” We aren’t supposed to notice that during WWII Japan said Japanese theft was merely its “Monroe Doctrine for the Orient.” And not to be outdone, even Hitler cited the Monroe Doctrine when Germany annexed Austria. Indeed, we are an example to the world - just not a very good one.
Fun Facts: In the 1930’s flying from Germany to Brazil on the Hindenburg Zeppelin took around 90 hours. “Of the 13.6 million German soldiers killed, wounded, or captured in the war (WWII), 10 million were by the Red Army.” So much for the fantasy that the US and not the Soviet Union won WWII. Unlike the Nazis and the Japanese, the US didn’t have to fight a single battle to procure resources during the war, it controlled Latin America’s resources (through ramming the Monroe Doctrine down the world’s throat for decades, much like Richard Nixon who had to see Deep Throat three times, just to get it down Pat).
The Marshall Plan intentionally did not include Latin America; instead, only white Western Europe got money from the Marshall Plan. The plan was basically a front for finding new markets for US goods. “No funds were included for Latin-American (post-WWII) reconstruction.” Truman filled Latin-American posts with white motherfuckers who were financially invested in Latin America and “hated economic nationalism.” How dare Latin-American countries help their OWN people first, instead of US capital? Note that, “between 1945 and 1951, Washington gave Belgium and Luxembourg more direct aid than it did ALL of Latin America.” The US then switched Latin America’s emphasis from “democracy to security” (a common theme of Noam’s). From individual freedom to controlling one’s population through force and fear. US liberals today obediently point their Facebook fingers at Putin as the only dictator they notice while happily remaining braindead regarding their beloved US’s obvious involvement financing “Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Duvalier in Haiti, Stroessner in Paraguay, Odria in Peru, Perez Jimenez in Venezuela, Somoza in Nicaragua”, Pinochet in Chile, Armas in Guatemala, the Shah in Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Diem in Vietnam, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Modi in India, and even today the US happily bends over for Saudia Arabia’s dictator. The liberal fantasy is that Putin is worse than all the above-mentioned dictators the US has openly supported, and liberals refuse to condemn let alone study. Heck, on page 565, Greg shows how the CIA set up the notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie in Bolivia so he could teach “death squads and military men how to torture.” Yum… The US historically finances dictators and war criminals, then in default points fingers at Putin while ignoring the un-justified larger crimes of Netanyahu and US finance capital (read Michael Hudson books). Only allies who kiss our ass, get the free pass.
Wonder how Columbia turned into a shithole country where tourists run a serious risk of getting kidnapped, injured/robbed by thieves? “Throughout the 1950s, Columbia received more military aid from Washington than any other Latin American nation.” We sent Columbian generals any weapons they requested to use on their OWN population. What a great moral role model we are. The US demanded during the Cold War, “a pliant Latin America.” In 1960, President Eisenhower ordered Castro’s assassination calling for him to be “sawed off”. Around the same time, Ike wanted the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba eliminated (which soon happened). What’s the difference between Mafia leaders ordering a blatantly illegal hit on someone, and a US President ordering one? That’s easy, US presidents always get away with murder. Did a single US liberal complain when Obama ordered the murder of a sixteen-year-old boy in Yemen for FUTURE crimes? After the US failed stopping Castro’s Revolution, our morally challenged leaders committed 16 blatantly illegal regime changes from 1961 and 1969 (including El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, and British Guiana). In the 80’s the US took its morally depraved show on the road bringing the worst of Latin American capitalism to Russia singlehandedly turning Russia from a 30% poverty rate in the 80’s to soon a poverty rate close to 80%. Luckily, US liberals are taught to believe that Putin is 100% evil, so none of them will ever look at the long documented back story of the US provoking Russia, so the canard of Putin (and not Netanyahu) as the most dangerous man alive, lives on.
This was a great book, which is not surprising since everything Greg Grandin writes is a great read and always on a subject rarely talked about. Kudos to the author; as you can see, I learned a lot, and you can too.
In 1614, Captain John Smith records fields of planted corn, gardens overflowing w/ mulberries and lots of nutritious acorns and “forty well-organized villages.” Others found “squash, pumpkins, tobacco, corn, bean, berries and other fruit all planted in cultivated fields” and the largest flocks of “fowl we have ever seen.” In 1500, when London’s population was 50,000, Mexico City was three times that size. London then grew so much that the pressure was on to send “surplus” peoples to England’s colonies in an early Brit version of lebensraum. Both in Mexico and Ireland massacre followed massacre including the slaughtering of women, children and the elderly (once the men fled or were killed). In Ireland, Sir Gilbert had the heads cut off the Irish corpses and placed them in rows along the path Irish petitioners must take to “passe through a line of heddes.” In 1582-1583 (Munster) and 1602-1603 (Ulster) the Brits deliberately starved the Irish into submission. Even today those “civilized” Brits are still financing deliberate starvation (Gaza, anyone?) after starving millions of Iranians in WWI (see Mohammad Gholi Majd book), and millions of Indians during the Bengal Famine. Given the quality of British cuisine, I’m surprised the Brits aren’t starving themselves as well.
Sir Arthur Chichester in 1600 reported seeing in a British colony “three small children – the least not above ten years old – feeding off the flesh of their starved mother.” If that doesn’t lead you to sing Rule Britannia, what will? Many England saw Irish Catholics allied with Catholic Spain and its abuses (“Popish cruelties” and “slaughter’d Indians”) in Latin America. Much better for physical abuses to come from Protestant hands than Catholic; “Calm down! You are being raped and starved by a Protestant and not by a Catholic, so stop whining!” Captain John Smith was hoping to find indigenous to “exploit for tribute and labor” and force to bring them food. “Captain Smith modeled himself on Cortes” and the motto on his coat arms was “vincere est vivere” (to conquer is to live). You can’t get more Christian than that! Ha ha…
Spain had Las Casas (the famed indigenous defender who believed Christ spoke through the persecuted) as a countervailing moral force. But the author found that England apparently had no voice who championed the non-violent teachings of Las Casas let alone the Ten Commandments, or Sermon on the Mount - or spent time questioning the morality of settlement. The 1622 Powatan Massacre of settlers in Jamestown was treated just like October 7th, 2023 in Israel – as rationale for wanton destruction and subjugation by the chosen whites (including invasion) to “destroy them who sought to destroy us.” [“How dare you resist us taking your land?”] In 1637, Captains John Mason and John Underhill entered the native town of Mystic Connecticut while its braves were out getting supplies, and then “burned hundreds of (native) people they found huddled in a roundhouse, mostly women, children, and the elderly”. While burning children to death today [even captured in gruesome detail on video] these days isn’t considered remotely newsworthy or even immoral, the Mystic Massacre has long shocked US history buffs from the comfort of the past – “thank God we never reflect on our own complicity today” shouts the indoctrinated chorus of Rachel Maddow trained US liberals.
Don’t forget Boston was once happily a slave port, and Rhode Island mansions and its wealth came from Newport being the largest slave port in North America and Rhode Island itself had 25-30 large scale slave plantations. Oops… Many indentured servants of the time arriving in New England fled into the countryside as soon as they saw the upcoming years of drudgery ahead, and some of them soon lived among the Wampanoag. If you look at the Caribbean during this time, you’ll notice the Brits were no better than the Spanish and were mostly “raiders, slavers, and kidnappers.” David Hume in 1753 said, “There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white.” The author says in total the Brits with their “ships took more than three million people from Africa.” Hume would no doubt have called that “civilized”. Massachusetts was the first colony to say yes to slavery, followed in order by Connecticut, Virginia, New York and New Jersey. I picture Nancy Reagan’s ancestors back then holding up placards saying, “Sayeth Thou Yes to Slavery”. This book shows (p. 133) how we won the American Revolution because France and Spain in an early form of GoFundMe “gave the rebels the up-to-date weapons (to replace primitive colonial rifles used for hunting rabbits) that allowed for their unexpected victory at Saratoga in late 1777.” Independence leaders in Mexico at this time read Diderot, Rousseau and Las Casas. Today’s US readers in contrast appear to limit their “reading” to laminated menus and narrow bandwidth red-blue diatribes.
Did you know Andrew Jackson in 1789 put his hand on a bible when he was a slave trader and as an American pledged loyalty to Spain (p.146)? In contrast, today’s US presidents no longer need a bible to pledge loyalty to Israel. Viva La Difference! In 1802, Spain gave New Orleans and Louisiana (828,000 sq. miles) to France in return for the Italian kingdom of Etruria. A year later France sold the former to the US. Chattel slavery was a big reason the US expanded to the West Coast with settlers leading the way. Alexander Hamilton was into breaking Spanish America away from Spain big time (Francisco de Miranda’s plan). Thomas Jefferson, not known for his math skills, said that the US would soon have over a billion inhabitants. Spanish America’s first republic was Venezuela in 1811. Bolivar helped create Gran Columbia which existed from 1819 to 1831. Mexico had been part of The United Provinces of Central America but became independent in 1821, along with Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica. These new Spanish Republics then went from exporting silver to Spain to exporting silver to England to pay it back for help freeing themselves from Spain. “Not one Spanish American republic in the decades after independence could keep up with interest payments.” “The United States also won its independence on borrowed money.”
The conservative impulse to shrink government was apparent decades before the Civil War because slavers needed the executive branch constrained. This meant stopping ANY attempt to strengthen the federal government. “The Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans gave way to the Whigs and the Democrats.” But what did people say before they said, “Don’t make a federal case about it?” Did you know that a war between Brazil and Argentina led to the birth of Uruguay? Gran Columbia became present day Panama, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, and part of Peru and Brazil. The author says, “racial frontier violence was never as central a component of national identity for Spanish America and Brazil as it was for the United States.” Lincoln once told a delegation of freemen many reasons why the “two races on this continent” couldn’t live together adding, “it is better for us both, to be separated.” That’s not exactly the Lincoln we were taught in school. Instead of bringing democracy to other countries, “Marines landed in Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, and Honduras for short periods, and occupied Nicaragua (1927-1932), Haiti (1915-1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) for decades” fighting those “who didn’t want them there.” All this after the US annexed Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii and Guam and part of Panama. At the time the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, US investors owned “nearly half of all Mexican property value.” Not exactly bloodless, the Mexican Revolution ended up killing three to four million Mexicans out of a population of fifteen million. Many US officials in Woodrow Wilson’s administration owned property in Mexico, leading a top historian to call the Mexican Revolution the “first great third world uprising against American economic, cultural and political expansion.” At this time Mexico “was pumping more petroleum than any other country in the world.” We couldn’t have that NOT benefit first the US.
Henry Ford’s Model T’s got 20 miles per gallon. By 1970, the average US fuel economy was down to 12 mpg. Ah, American ingenuity. The US didn’t bother to raise that fuel number to equal Henry Ford’s 20 mpg until the late 1980’s. Dupont got its start selling gunpowder to US leaders to better kill Native Americans and then diversified into gunpowder to better steal land from Mexico. Dupont’s eventual motto “Better Things for Better Living” was an improvement over the original “Helping Whites Better Steal and Kill Since 1802.” The US pretended that its Monroe Doctrine “was international law.” We aren’t supposed to notice that during WWII Japan said Japanese theft was merely its “Monroe Doctrine for the Orient.” And not to be outdone, even Hitler cited the Monroe Doctrine when Germany annexed Austria. Indeed, we are an example to the world - just not a very good one.
Fun Facts: In the 1930’s flying from Germany to Brazil on the Hindenburg Zeppelin took around 90 hours. “Of the 13.6 million German soldiers killed, wounded, or captured in the war (WWII), 10 million were by the Red Army.” So much for the fantasy that the US and not the Soviet Union won WWII. Unlike the Nazis and the Japanese, the US didn’t have to fight a single battle to procure resources during the war, it controlled Latin America’s resources (through ramming the Monroe Doctrine down the world’s throat for decades, much like Richard Nixon who had to see Deep Throat three times, just to get it down Pat).
The Marshall Plan intentionally did not include Latin America; instead, only white Western Europe got money from the Marshall Plan. The plan was basically a front for finding new markets for US goods. “No funds were included for Latin-American (post-WWII) reconstruction.” Truman filled Latin-American posts with white motherfuckers who were financially invested in Latin America and “hated economic nationalism.” How dare Latin-American countries help their OWN people first, instead of US capital? Note that, “between 1945 and 1951, Washington gave Belgium and Luxembourg more direct aid than it did ALL of Latin America.” The US then switched Latin America’s emphasis from “democracy to security” (a common theme of Noam’s). From individual freedom to controlling one’s population through force and fear. US liberals today obediently point their Facebook fingers at Putin as the only dictator they notice while happily remaining braindead regarding their beloved US’s obvious involvement financing “Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Duvalier in Haiti, Stroessner in Paraguay, Odria in Peru, Perez Jimenez in Venezuela, Somoza in Nicaragua”, Pinochet in Chile, Armas in Guatemala, the Shah in Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Diem in Vietnam, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Modi in India, and even today the US happily bends over for Saudia Arabia’s dictator. The liberal fantasy is that Putin is worse than all the above-mentioned dictators the US has openly supported, and liberals refuse to condemn let alone study. Heck, on page 565, Greg shows how the CIA set up the notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie in Bolivia so he could teach “death squads and military men how to torture.” Yum… The US historically finances dictators and war criminals, then in default points fingers at Putin while ignoring the un-justified larger crimes of Netanyahu and US finance capital (read Michael Hudson books). Only allies who kiss our ass, get the free pass.
Wonder how Columbia turned into a shithole country where tourists run a serious risk of getting kidnapped, injured/robbed by thieves? “Throughout the 1950s, Columbia received more military aid from Washington than any other Latin American nation.” We sent Columbian generals any weapons they requested to use on their OWN population. What a great moral role model we are. The US demanded during the Cold War, “a pliant Latin America.” In 1960, President Eisenhower ordered Castro’s assassination calling for him to be “sawed off”. Around the same time, Ike wanted the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba eliminated (which soon happened). What’s the difference between Mafia leaders ordering a blatantly illegal hit on someone, and a US President ordering one? That’s easy, US presidents always get away with murder. Did a single US liberal complain when Obama ordered the murder of a sixteen-year-old boy in Yemen for FUTURE crimes? After the US failed stopping Castro’s Revolution, our morally challenged leaders committed 16 blatantly illegal regime changes from 1961 and 1969 (including El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, and British Guiana). In the 80’s the US took its morally depraved show on the road bringing the worst of Latin American capitalism to Russia singlehandedly turning Russia from a 30% poverty rate in the 80’s to soon a poverty rate close to 80%. Luckily, US liberals are taught to believe that Putin is 100% evil, so none of them will ever look at the long documented back story of the US provoking Russia, so the canard of Putin (and not Netanyahu) as the most dangerous man alive, lives on.
This was a great book, which is not surprising since everything Greg Grandin writes is a great read and always on a subject rarely talked about. Kudos to the author; as you can see, I learned a lot, and you can too.
June 6, 2025
I needed this book in my life.
It feels like I’ve waited years for someone to finally put into one single work a non academic but well-researched account of how Latin America’s history has always been shaped by global events, and vice versa. This idea has always been floating in my head, but I had never found it written out in such a clear, thoughtful way.
This topic has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. For example, when I was a teenager reading Jane Austen, I would constantly pause and look up what was happening in Colombia during the same time period, even if our political affairs had absolutely nothing to do with Austen’s heroines. I’ve always been interested on how dots connect across histories, and Grandin does exactly that here, but with actual depth, context, and clarity.
I consider myself someone with solid knowledge of Colombian history, decent knowledge of Latin American history, and a good grasp of Western history. Still, this book taught me so so much. The amount of research that must have gone into it is wild. It's ambitious, dense, layered, and still manages to be a page-turner.
If you’re a fan of Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, you’ll love this. It reads like a follow-up and deep dive into the American, Colombian, and Mexican revolutions. Even better, Grandin traces the long-term consequences of these events into the modern era.
One thing I particularly appreciated was the book’s nuanced take on the Catholic Church. Too often, the Church’s role in Latin American history is portrayed as uniformly oppressive, ultra-conservative, and allied with the right wing. While that’s certainly part of the story, Grandin also highlights the Church’s more progressive legacy: how it provided philosophical and moral justifications for independence movements, the emancipation of enslaved people, and the defense of Indigenous populations. In more recent history, the Church has even played a key role in resisting fascism. It’s not that the Catholic Church has been all good, but it hasn’t been all bad either.
My favorite part was the final section, covering recent history from the 1940s and until the 80s. As a kid, I studied the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán I'm school. As an adult, I watched a couple of documentaries on the topic. And yet I never realized the international importance of that moment. It was fascinating.
I thought about listing pros and cons, but honestly, there are too many pros to count. The entire book is a “pro” if you’re into this kind of thing as much as I am.
That said, here are a few points that might be considered “cons” depending on the reader, but not for me:
- The author clearly has an opinion, and his opinion shines through the words. If you’re uncomfortable with critiques of the United States, this might not be your book.
- The focus is uneven. The early chapters about independence are heavily centered on Simón Bolívar, with very little mention of San Martín or other libertadores. And the final part is strongly focused on Colombia. Personally, I loved that, since Colombia is the country I care most about, but other readers might find it unbalanced.
- The book may feel like it overstates Latin America’s role in world affairs, particularly in shaping the UN or global decolonization. Depending on your worldview, this could either feel inspiring or like a stretch.
- Also: this book is very niche. I can only think of one person I’d recommend it to. It’s for someone who is equally interested in Latin American history, world history, and who enjoys reading long books in English (as far as I know, there’s no Spanish translation yet).
The only true “con” for me:
- Puerto Rico is nearly absent. It gets just a couple of brief mentions. I understand this book is already incredibly ambitious and covering every country in depth would be impossible. But if you’re going to write about U.S.–Latin America relations, you can’t ignore Puerto Rico, which is still a U.S. colony to this day. It’s a glaring omission.
I definitely plan to reread America América in the not-too-distant future and keep an eye for the author's future works.
It feels like I’ve waited years for someone to finally put into one single work a non academic but well-researched account of how Latin America’s history has always been shaped by global events, and vice versa. This idea has always been floating in my head, but I had never found it written out in such a clear, thoughtful way.
This topic has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. For example, when I was a teenager reading Jane Austen, I would constantly pause and look up what was happening in Colombia during the same time period, even if our political affairs had absolutely nothing to do with Austen’s heroines. I’ve always been interested on how dots connect across histories, and Grandin does exactly that here, but with actual depth, context, and clarity.
I consider myself someone with solid knowledge of Colombian history, decent knowledge of Latin American history, and a good grasp of Western history. Still, this book taught me so so much. The amount of research that must have gone into it is wild. It's ambitious, dense, layered, and still manages to be a page-turner.
If you’re a fan of Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, you’ll love this. It reads like a follow-up and deep dive into the American, Colombian, and Mexican revolutions. Even better, Grandin traces the long-term consequences of these events into the modern era.
One thing I particularly appreciated was the book’s nuanced take on the Catholic Church. Too often, the Church’s role in Latin American history is portrayed as uniformly oppressive, ultra-conservative, and allied with the right wing. While that’s certainly part of the story, Grandin also highlights the Church’s more progressive legacy: how it provided philosophical and moral justifications for independence movements, the emancipation of enslaved people, and the defense of Indigenous populations. In more recent history, the Church has even played a key role in resisting fascism. It’s not that the Catholic Church has been all good, but it hasn’t been all bad either.
My favorite part was the final section, covering recent history from the 1940s and until the 80s. As a kid, I studied the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán I'm school. As an adult, I watched a couple of documentaries on the topic. And yet I never realized the international importance of that moment. It was fascinating.
I thought about listing pros and cons, but honestly, there are too many pros to count. The entire book is a “pro” if you’re into this kind of thing as much as I am.
That said, here are a few points that might be considered “cons” depending on the reader, but not for me:
- The author clearly has an opinion, and his opinion shines through the words. If you’re uncomfortable with critiques of the United States, this might not be your book.
- The focus is uneven. The early chapters about independence are heavily centered on Simón Bolívar, with very little mention of San Martín or other libertadores. And the final part is strongly focused on Colombia. Personally, I loved that, since Colombia is the country I care most about, but other readers might find it unbalanced.
- The book may feel like it overstates Latin America’s role in world affairs, particularly in shaping the UN or global decolonization. Depending on your worldview, this could either feel inspiring or like a stretch.
- Also: this book is very niche. I can only think of one person I’d recommend it to. It’s for someone who is equally interested in Latin American history, world history, and who enjoys reading long books in English (as far as I know, there’s no Spanish translation yet).
The only true “con” for me:
- Puerto Rico is nearly absent. It gets just a couple of brief mentions. I understand this book is already incredibly ambitious and covering every country in depth would be impossible. But if you’re going to write about U.S.–Latin America relations, you can’t ignore Puerto Rico, which is still a U.S. colony to this day. It’s a glaring omission.
I definitely plan to reread America América in the not-too-distant future and keep an eye for the author's future works.
January 7, 2026
Perhaps the definitive review has already been written for this book at American Ideologies - Dissent Magazine, but I still have a lot I want to say. While there’s a lot of very interesting material in the book, and I learned a few things from it, I strongly disagree with its middle-class leftist, or Woke politics, which sound very radical when dealing with events in the past, but which are actually very superficial. Some have given the label “presentism” to those who judge the past by what they view as today’s standards. Morality is not some unchanging thing as philosophical idealists believe. It changes, as everything does. I view that this approach is largely due to the widespread influence of A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present by Howard Zinn, an excellent writer who I characterized as an anarcho-liberal.
I agree that Las Casas is a figure of great importance, but I like the Marxist approach, so well-articulated by Armando Hart, Cuba’s former Minister of Education, and later of Culture, much of which appears in Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History. He explains why both Las Casas AND Columbus are heroes. But Grandin’s views on Las Casas are part of his myth-filled ideas about Latin America which take up a lot of room in the book. Much of the rest is idealist myths about the United States.
Contrary to what Grandin thinks, the US had two genuine revolutions, see America's Revolutionary Heritage and The Civil War in the United States. Other important Marxist works toward understanding US history include Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55, Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War, and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power. I also recommend the three-volume America in the King Years by Taylor Branch, despite its King-centric views.
One of the words Grandin is fond of is “imperialism.” The word has a long history, but it is only V.I. Lenin who gave it a modern, scientific meaning, which is monopoly capital, a stage of capitalism, NOT a policy. See Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Grandin likes Woodrow Wilson, who supported the first inter-imperialist slaughter (estimate 20 million dead), and his view of self-determination did not include colonial possessions. I don’t really care what he thought, even if there was some way I could know. The war, on both sides was just a war to make the rich richer.
FDR, secular saint of Stalinists and liberals was another imperialist. As befits an idealist, Grandin thinks their words, and what he would like to believe were their thoughts mean more than their actions. Roosevelt needed Latin America on his side as he prepared for a massive slaughter which was almost inevitable based on the terms of the Versailles Treaty, which bled Germany dry.
The German workers rose up against the war, as the Russian workers had, but the Social Democrats prevented revolution from going further than the overthrow of the kaiser and arranged for the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Although the Communist International had approved the perfect tool for fighting fascism—the united front (not to be confused with the later Stalinist policy of the popular front), the Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration in the Soviet Union (see The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky) resulted in a view that the Social Democrats represented a form of fascism, even more dangerous than Hitler’s variety. I suggest people read the Trotsky compilation, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, although they might have an easier time with Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business. Everything both the Stalinists and Social Democrats did, aided the rise of Nazism. Liberals always say that Nazism came to power peacefully, but this only means that they had no need for violence against the bourgeois state—they used massive violence against the Jews and the huge organizations of the working class, which included unions, cooperatives, political parties, athletic clubs, and singing groups.
Anti-Semitism is the only form of racism which can pass itself off as a form of socialism—for years it was called “the socialism of fools.” A lot of fools today who believe they’re still socialists are in fact moving closer to fascism. There is no difference between “left-wing” Jew-hatred and the “right-wing” variety—they’re both based on the same myths and conspiracy theories. What we call Nazis were the National Socialist German Workers Party, although they had few working-class members. Their ranks were filled with the lumpen proletariat (long time out of work, demoralized former workers involved in criminal activity), but primarily layers of the middle class—small bourgeoisie—with a frenzied fear of being forced down into the working class.
If Roosevelt had been interested in fighting fascism, he could have started at home with the Ku Klux Klan, and many similar groups. Sorry, the US didn’t go to war to defeat fascism. Not with a Jim Crow army, Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, a no-strike pledge forced on the unions, and the leaders of the most serious opposition to the war within the labor movement in prison—Leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters. The US refused to bomb the rail lines leading to the death camps and cut Jewish immigration to the bone. They left the fascist dictator of Spain—Franco—in power.
The Socialist Workers Party was on the side of the Soviet Union in the war, despite having no confidence in the Stalinist leadership. It was also on the side of all the colonial people against their oppressors. SWP leader James P. Cannon had it right when he said “It is absolutely true that Hitler wants to dominate the world, but it is equally true that the ruling group of American capitalists has the same idea. We’re not in favor of either of them.” The SWP did not oppose conscription, much less call for sabotage (see Teamster Bureaucracy and Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial.
First, it was an inter-imperialist slaughter—the second in a quarter century waged over the redivision and plunder of the world. The victory in that war by Washington, London, and their allies over Berlin, Tokyo, and Rome did nothing to weaken, let alone eliminate, the worldwide system of imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation, which is the social root of the march toward depression, fascism, and war that has continued to confront humanity to this day. U.S. finance capital used the war to consolidate its position, economically and militarily, as the world’s mightiest (and, I should add, final) dominant imperialist power.
The US fought to dominate the world just as Hitler did. They were more successful against both their “allies” and enemies. But they used utter brutality—two nuclear weapons dropped on Japan, the perhaps even worse firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden, to show the German working class—among the first victims of Nazism-- that this war was not for their benefit.
As I explained, imperialism is not a policy--it is a stage of capitalism. Washington—the self-declared “indispensable nation.” But to Grandin it’s just a question of who the leaders are, and what the bourgeoisie economists say. But he himself admits that “neoliberalism” is nothing new, “In truth, this program was not all that different from the one the U.S. business lobby wanted Truman to press on Latin America in 1948."
As for today, Grandin’s epilogue is only correct on one thing—the threat of war—world war in fact—but he’s totally wrong about where it’s coming from. He says “Washington funds and arms dangerous, potentially escalatory wars, in Ukraine and Gaza, in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and the Gulf of Aden, wherever. Yet politicians are clueless about what comes after the guns go silent, or if they ever will go silent.”
Ukraine is fighting a totally defensive war, to prevent Putin from bringing back the tsarist “prison house of nations.” And the main reason they’re able to keep fighting isn’t the high-tech weapons, but the antiwar sentiments of the working class of Russia, especially that of oppressed nationalities, as well as an important layer of intellectuals. This is despite the ferocious repression they face.
And Israel is this time fighting a defensive war against Hamas, who in their own words want to complete the Holocaust. They have nothing to do with the national aspirations of the Palestian people. See The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. The idea that what Israel is doing is “genocidal” is absurd. People committing genocide don’t warn the population to get out of the line of fire or help feed them. Every war the US has fought has been more “genocidal” than this war in Gaza. Yes, there are racists in high (and low) places in Israel, just like in the US. It’s a capitalist government that I don’t support, but without its survival there will be another Holocaust.
Grandin says that “And so far, the left has held the authoritarian right at bay as it always has, by putting forth a coherent social-democratic agenda.” This is nonsense. Whatever Grandin likes he calls social-democratic; it has no scientific or class content. While he considers Cuba to be authoritarian, there is little as authoritarian as the Stalinist-influenced Woke left. And little as prone to violence. They force people to accept their view that all whites are racist, and they are dismantling the rights women have won, by their “gender politics” which make it OK for males to invade women’s locker rooms and compete in sports against them. Have they never heard of sexual dimorphism? You cannot change the sex of a human being—this is not science—it’s sheer idealism—the opposite of science. Very young women, frequently with no sexual experience, are being brow-beaten to “change gender,” when they have same-sex attraction or reject “girl's toys.” (Why are toys still labeled as male or female? Because the liberation of women still has a long way to go after centuries of being slaves to fathers and then husbands). This is a huge scandal! And it represents totally reactionary politics.
To end with an optimistic book to read: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Selected reading on Latin America/the Caribbean and the United States
Bolivia
The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara
Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia, A First-Hand Account by Rodolfo Saldaña
Pombo: A Man of Che’s guerrilla: With Che Guevara in Bolivia, 1966–68
Colombia
Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia: Lessons from the CubanvRevolution
Chile
On Chile
Cuba
Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation
The First and Second Declarations of Havana
Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas
October 1962: The 'Missile' Crisis as Seen from Cuba
To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's 'cold War' Against Cuba Doesn't End
Grenada
Maurice Bishop Speaks: The Grenada Revolution and Its Overthrow, 1979-83
New International no 6: The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop
Nicaragua
The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution (New International Series) by Mary-Alice Waters
Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution
Peru
Peru's 'Shining Path': Evolution of a Stalinist Sect
Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico: Independence Is a Necessity
Venezuela
Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible?: A Necessary Debate Among Working People
I agree that Las Casas is a figure of great importance, but I like the Marxist approach, so well-articulated by Armando Hart, Cuba’s former Minister of Education, and later of Culture, much of which appears in Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History. He explains why both Las Casas AND Columbus are heroes. But Grandin’s views on Las Casas are part of his myth-filled ideas about Latin America which take up a lot of room in the book. Much of the rest is idealist myths about the United States.
Contrary to what Grandin thinks, the US had two genuine revolutions, see America's Revolutionary Heritage and The Civil War in the United States. Other important Marxist works toward understanding US history include Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55, Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War, and Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power. I also recommend the three-volume America in the King Years by Taylor Branch, despite its King-centric views.
One of the words Grandin is fond of is “imperialism.” The word has a long history, but it is only V.I. Lenin who gave it a modern, scientific meaning, which is monopoly capital, a stage of capitalism, NOT a policy. See Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Grandin likes Woodrow Wilson, who supported the first inter-imperialist slaughter (estimate 20 million dead), and his view of self-determination did not include colonial possessions. I don’t really care what he thought, even if there was some way I could know. The war, on both sides was just a war to make the rich richer.
FDR, secular saint of Stalinists and liberals was another imperialist. As befits an idealist, Grandin thinks their words, and what he would like to believe were their thoughts mean more than their actions. Roosevelt needed Latin America on his side as he prepared for a massive slaughter which was almost inevitable based on the terms of the Versailles Treaty, which bled Germany dry.
The German workers rose up against the war, as the Russian workers had, but the Social Democrats prevented revolution from going further than the overthrow of the kaiser and arranged for the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Although the Communist International had approved the perfect tool for fighting fascism—the united front (not to be confused with the later Stalinist policy of the popular front), the Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration in the Soviet Union (see The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky) resulted in a view that the Social Democrats represented a form of fascism, even more dangerous than Hitler’s variety. I suggest people read the Trotsky compilation, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, although they might have an easier time with Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business. Everything both the Stalinists and Social Democrats did, aided the rise of Nazism. Liberals always say that Nazism came to power peacefully, but this only means that they had no need for violence against the bourgeois state—they used massive violence against the Jews and the huge organizations of the working class, which included unions, cooperatives, political parties, athletic clubs, and singing groups.
Anti-Semitism is the only form of racism which can pass itself off as a form of socialism—for years it was called “the socialism of fools.” A lot of fools today who believe they’re still socialists are in fact moving closer to fascism. There is no difference between “left-wing” Jew-hatred and the “right-wing” variety—they’re both based on the same myths and conspiracy theories. What we call Nazis were the National Socialist German Workers Party, although they had few working-class members. Their ranks were filled with the lumpen proletariat (long time out of work, demoralized former workers involved in criminal activity), but primarily layers of the middle class—small bourgeoisie—with a frenzied fear of being forced down into the working class.
If Roosevelt had been interested in fighting fascism, he could have started at home with the Ku Klux Klan, and many similar groups. Sorry, the US didn’t go to war to defeat fascism. Not with a Jim Crow army, Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, a no-strike pledge forced on the unions, and the leaders of the most serious opposition to the war within the labor movement in prison—Leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters. The US refused to bomb the rail lines leading to the death camps and cut Jewish immigration to the bone. They left the fascist dictator of Spain—Franco—in power.
The Socialist Workers Party was on the side of the Soviet Union in the war, despite having no confidence in the Stalinist leadership. It was also on the side of all the colonial people against their oppressors. SWP leader James P. Cannon had it right when he said “It is absolutely true that Hitler wants to dominate the world, but it is equally true that the ruling group of American capitalists has the same idea. We’re not in favor of either of them.” The SWP did not oppose conscription, much less call for sabotage (see Teamster Bureaucracy and Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial.
First, it was an inter-imperialist slaughter—the second in a quarter century waged over the redivision and plunder of the world. The victory in that war by Washington, London, and their allies over Berlin, Tokyo, and Rome did nothing to weaken, let alone eliminate, the worldwide system of imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation, which is the social root of the march toward depression, fascism, and war that has continued to confront humanity to this day. U.S. finance capital used the war to consolidate its position, economically and militarily, as the world’s mightiest (and, I should add, final) dominant imperialist power.
The US fought to dominate the world just as Hitler did. They were more successful against both their “allies” and enemies. But they used utter brutality—two nuclear weapons dropped on Japan, the perhaps even worse firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden, to show the German working class—among the first victims of Nazism-- that this war was not for their benefit.
As I explained, imperialism is not a policy--it is a stage of capitalism. Washington—the self-declared “indispensable nation.” But to Grandin it’s just a question of who the leaders are, and what the bourgeoisie economists say. But he himself admits that “neoliberalism” is nothing new, “In truth, this program was not all that different from the one the U.S. business lobby wanted Truman to press on Latin America in 1948."
As for today, Grandin’s epilogue is only correct on one thing—the threat of war—world war in fact—but he’s totally wrong about where it’s coming from. He says “Washington funds and arms dangerous, potentially escalatory wars, in Ukraine and Gaza, in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and the Gulf of Aden, wherever. Yet politicians are clueless about what comes after the guns go silent, or if they ever will go silent.”
Ukraine is fighting a totally defensive war, to prevent Putin from bringing back the tsarist “prison house of nations.” And the main reason they’re able to keep fighting isn’t the high-tech weapons, but the antiwar sentiments of the working class of Russia, especially that of oppressed nationalities, as well as an important layer of intellectuals. This is despite the ferocious repression they face.
And Israel is this time fighting a defensive war against Hamas, who in their own words want to complete the Holocaust. They have nothing to do with the national aspirations of the Palestian people. See The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch. The idea that what Israel is doing is “genocidal” is absurd. People committing genocide don’t warn the population to get out of the line of fire or help feed them. Every war the US has fought has been more “genocidal” than this war in Gaza. Yes, there are racists in high (and low) places in Israel, just like in the US. It’s a capitalist government that I don’t support, but without its survival there will be another Holocaust.
Grandin says that “And so far, the left has held the authoritarian right at bay as it always has, by putting forth a coherent social-democratic agenda.” This is nonsense. Whatever Grandin likes he calls social-democratic; it has no scientific or class content. While he considers Cuba to be authoritarian, there is little as authoritarian as the Stalinist-influenced Woke left. And little as prone to violence. They force people to accept their view that all whites are racist, and they are dismantling the rights women have won, by their “gender politics” which make it OK for males to invade women’s locker rooms and compete in sports against them. Have they never heard of sexual dimorphism? You cannot change the sex of a human being—this is not science—it’s sheer idealism—the opposite of science. Very young women, frequently with no sexual experience, are being brow-beaten to “change gender,” when they have same-sex attraction or reject “girl's toys.” (Why are toys still labeled as male or female? Because the liberation of women still has a long way to go after centuries of being slaves to fathers and then husbands). This is a huge scandal! And it represents totally reactionary politics.
To end with an optimistic book to read: The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Selected reading on Latin America/the Caribbean and the United States
Bolivia
The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara
Fertile Ground: Che Guevara and Bolivia, A First-Hand Account by Rodolfo Saldaña
Pombo: A Man of Che’s guerrilla: With Che Guevara in Bolivia, 1966–68
Colombia
Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia: Lessons from the CubanvRevolution
Chile
On Chile
Cuba
Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation
The First and Second Declarations of Havana
Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas
October 1962: The 'Missile' Crisis as Seen from Cuba
To Speak the Truth: Why Washington's 'cold War' Against Cuba Doesn't End
Grenada
Maurice Bishop Speaks: The Grenada Revolution and Its Overthrow, 1979-83
New International no 6: The Second Assassination of Maurice Bishop
Nicaragua
The Rise and Fall of the Nicaraguan Revolution (New International Series) by Mary-Alice Waters
Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution
Peru
Peru's 'Shining Path': Evolution of a Stalinist Sect
Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico: Independence Is a Necessity
Venezuela
Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible?: A Necessary Debate Among Working People
June 28, 2025
Amazingly new perspective of the history of both parts of the continent evolving since the 15th century. I gained so much new knowledge, especially about the deeply profound impact progressive (as in social democratic) ideas and philosophy Latin America had to shape international law.
More familiar is the consistently destructive influence US elites always had to trade economic power over democracy. Wealth extraction for North America has shaped everything for literally centuries.
The book is not an easy read and takes real effort but the reward is a real holistic view of 500 years of history.
More familiar is the consistently destructive influence US elites always had to trade economic power over democracy. Wealth extraction for North America has shaped everything for literally centuries.
The book is not an easy read and takes real effort but the reward is a real holistic view of 500 years of history.
December 7, 2025
This was just brill. Recomended to me by a post grad student at the beginning of the year, then sequentially picked up and put down as term started. Had to return it to the library only 1/4 or so in, but managed to find an audiobook thank god.
Audio-book experience probably dulled parts, as I found myself drifting in and out at times, but I genuienly looked forward to listening to this while at work, and cycling home.
It's an outstanding regional history, extracting a narratives of the US/LAC relationship through case studies. My one critique - these sometimes felt a little random. Maybe it would have been nice for the author to focus on one theme to justify case study selection, or include a note about why, for example, Chile, Colombia, Panama, and Mexico recieved comprehensive coverage, while Jamaica, Grenada, Brazil, and Canada recieved virtually none. Just random examples, and I don't think an author can cover an entire regional history in one volume, but would have been nice to at least explain why stuff was in/ex-cluded.
Bits that stuck out to me were:
Wampanoag assessment of British colonialism as needing constant expansion based on their forestry habits
The influence Irish conquest had over the American campaign
Locke, Las Casas, and the philosophical differences of UK vs Spanish empire
The origin of the 'slur' cracker (used by Spanish to describe arrogant American settlers in then-Spanish Texas)
The Monroe doctrine's multiple applications, mobilised by Latin America for support as well as by the US for hegemony
Jose Marti's quote: "those who are full inside need little outisde"
The Marshall plan as actively underdeveloping Latin America
Truman as a regressive idiot in terms of LAC policy
LAC intellectualism - links to liberation theology, but also the focus throughout on local diplomats, writers, poets, and historians.
Excellent book, truly one of the best 'general' histories I have read. Couldn't recommend enough, and wish I had read it to start my Americas degree.
Audio-book experience probably dulled parts, as I found myself drifting in and out at times, but I genuienly looked forward to listening to this while at work, and cycling home.
It's an outstanding regional history, extracting a narratives of the US/LAC relationship through case studies. My one critique - these sometimes felt a little random. Maybe it would have been nice for the author to focus on one theme to justify case study selection, or include a note about why, for example, Chile, Colombia, Panama, and Mexico recieved comprehensive coverage, while Jamaica, Grenada, Brazil, and Canada recieved virtually none. Just random examples, and I don't think an author can cover an entire regional history in one volume, but would have been nice to at least explain why stuff was in/ex-cluded.
Bits that stuck out to me were:
Wampanoag assessment of British colonialism as needing constant expansion based on their forestry habits
The influence Irish conquest had over the American campaign
Locke, Las Casas, and the philosophical differences of UK vs Spanish empire
The origin of the 'slur' cracker (used by Spanish to describe arrogant American settlers in then-Spanish Texas)
The Monroe doctrine's multiple applications, mobilised by Latin America for support as well as by the US for hegemony
Jose Marti's quote: "those who are full inside need little outisde"
The Marshall plan as actively underdeveloping Latin America
Truman as a regressive idiot in terms of LAC policy
LAC intellectualism - links to liberation theology, but also the focus throughout on local diplomats, writers, poets, and historians.
Excellent book, truly one of the best 'general' histories I have read. Couldn't recommend enough, and wish I had read it to start my Americas degree.
January 1, 2026
My final read of the year and wow what a way to end 2025. This book is dense, very academic, and definitely not for everyone. He spends little time discussing the battles and facts from major events in history, with even the Mexican-American war only being mentioned in passing. If your goal is to get some general knowledge, this book isn’t for you.
This book is for people who want to understand the why, not just the what. Grandin delves into primary source material to understand the why of colonialism and internationalism and the theories of why history has happened. He is more consider with what soldiers understood their mission to serve than the mission itself. And I think that has created such a richer history. He has pieced together dominante ideologies throughout time and space to understand the formation of a Latin America and the Western Hemisphere, dating all the way back to the brutality of the Conquest 500 years ago. He ties a story together so masterfully, and paints a more wholistic picture. This book is not easily accessible, I do concede, but this book isn’t for you to start learning the history of the Western Hemisphere, but is part of a larger dialogue and is a next step for students. I’ve read a lot of texts on the region and Grandin pieced together the thought processes so well to make disparate moments glue together. My thinking of the world has changed, and how I will engage with literature and histories has shifted because of this text.
This book is for people who want to understand the why, not just the what. Grandin delves into primary source material to understand the why of colonialism and internationalism and the theories of why history has happened. He is more consider with what soldiers understood their mission to serve than the mission itself. And I think that has created such a richer history. He has pieced together dominante ideologies throughout time and space to understand the formation of a Latin America and the Western Hemisphere, dating all the way back to the brutality of the Conquest 500 years ago. He ties a story together so masterfully, and paints a more wholistic picture. This book is not easily accessible, I do concede, but this book isn’t for you to start learning the history of the Western Hemisphere, but is part of a larger dialogue and is a next step for students. I’ve read a lot of texts on the region and Grandin pieced together the thought processes so well to make disparate moments glue together. My thinking of the world has changed, and how I will engage with literature and histories has shifted because of this text.
October 30, 2025
This is quite the book. It traces the religious and political ideas that fought for dominance as Europe (Spain at first) encountered the new world and tried to figure out how to deal with this alien place: America. It covers the Spanish conquistadors and colonizers and all their atrocities as well as the priests (mostly) who fought for treating the natives like humans rather than subhuman beings who could be exploited, killed, and, literally, worked to death.
I as thinking that the tale of England’s interactions with the new world would be less atrocious, but I was wrong. The saddest part is how those men in power who aimed at committing the atrocities figured they’d wait and see whether there would be widespread dissent as there was with the Spanish, but there wasn’t.
It’s a unique book as so many of the aspects of US and World (as it is taught in the US) History take a back seat to the interactions between the US and our American neighbors. It’s really fascinating. The political intrigues can drag, but, overall, a really fascinating book that explains how and why much of the Western hemisphere has gotten ignored in the US since WWII, and how, after FDR, we turned from being good neighbors, to overthrowing democracy after democracy (not that we didn’t before WWII, because really, FDR was probably the brightest spot in our relationship with Central and South American countries) and enabling, if not outright training, despots and their regimes of terror.
Sad, but eye-opening, reading.
I as thinking that the tale of England’s interactions with the new world would be less atrocious, but I was wrong. The saddest part is how those men in power who aimed at committing the atrocities figured they’d wait and see whether there would be widespread dissent as there was with the Spanish, but there wasn’t.
It’s a unique book as so many of the aspects of US and World (as it is taught in the US) History take a back seat to the interactions between the US and our American neighbors. It’s really fascinating. The political intrigues can drag, but, overall, a really fascinating book that explains how and why much of the Western hemisphere has gotten ignored in the US since WWII, and how, after FDR, we turned from being good neighbors, to overthrowing democracy after democracy (not that we didn’t before WWII, because really, FDR was probably the brightest spot in our relationship with Central and South American countries) and enabling, if not outright training, despots and their regimes of terror.
Sad, but eye-opening, reading.
July 6, 2025
A very thorough and informative retelling of the discovery and conquest of both Americas that compares and contrasts the Spanish and English occupation. I learned much in Grandin's retelling especially that the Spanish for all their brutality knew what they were doing was wrong- thanks to Las Casas. The British though with all their "enlightened" philosophy saw nothing wrong with their exploitation of indigenous land and people. It was their duty and right to do so.
Latin America was a trailblazer in sovereignty and international law that created a blueprint for the League of Nations and the United Nations. Lots to absorb in this tome for the ages. Grandin takes it all the way to the present. I don't think he left a thing out. I am thinking of buying a copy now. It's on a par with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Eye opening.
Latin America was a trailblazer in sovereignty and international law that created a blueprint for the League of Nations and the United Nations. Lots to absorb in this tome for the ages. Grandin takes it all the way to the present. I don't think he left a thing out. I am thinking of buying a copy now. It's on a par with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Eye opening.
October 11, 2025
Wonderful. Grandin never disappoints, but I especially love that he’s been let loose to do “big” history like this and his last book. Can’t believe, per the afterword, that he originally wanted to start the book with the Latin American revolutions because I think the best part is the beginning where he compares the Spanish conquest to English settlement of North America. I didn’t know that much about Bartoleme de Las Casas but now I’m convinced he’s one of the unsung heroes of history. Protestantism was a huge mistake—we should have never let people read and interpret the Bible for themselves! I also loved learning more about liberation theology. One of the better books I’ve read in a while!!
October 19, 2025
Ambitious and groundbreaking look at United States history through Latin America's eyes, covering the Spanish conquest to the present day. Scholarly but accessible. Even as a Latin American student, I learned a great deal from Grandin's writing. A thorough defense of Social liberalism, liberal democracy, and international cooperation over authoritarian nationalism...
July 9, 2025
I can't believe I added 100 Years of Solitude to my To Read at the start of a chapter and then had the ending spoiled by the end of the chapter!
But for real, an amazingly detailed walkthrough of the differences, similarities, and interactions between America and América.
But for real, an amazingly detailed walkthrough of the differences, similarities, and interactions between America and América.
May 2, 2025
a little bit of a slow burn but as it gets into the 19th/20th and 21st centuries it really cooks and could be an important book for people trying to understand the political climate today
better than "open viens of Latin American" as Grandin I think does an excellent job in celebrating Latin America's successful Leftist movement as opposed to just treating it like a victim (which I think open viens kind of does)
I found the early anti Imperialism debates within the 16th century catholic church and the work of Bartholome Las cassas as well as the liberation theologians of the 20th century to be particularly interesting
better than "open viens of Latin American" as Grandin I think does an excellent job in celebrating Latin America's successful Leftist movement as opposed to just treating it like a victim (which I think open viens kind of does)
I found the early anti Imperialism debates within the 16th century catholic church and the work of Bartholome Las cassas as well as the liberation theologians of the 20th century to be particularly interesting
May 21, 2025
4.5/5. A phenomenal account of the Americas. Really great breakdown of the links between the US and Latin America surrounding the New Deal and establishment of the post WWII settlement.
August 26, 2025
3.5
Shewwww boy, this took me a long time to read, it is simply massive. Very very interesting but massive. I was particularly interested after reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and its idea of schismogenesis (how societies define themselves as separate from other societies) in the New World.
I think Grandin explores this idea (or something close to it) well. His central thesis — that the USA and Latin America owe as much if not more of their development to each other rather than their colonizers — I think is proven true. Then we have their complicated relationships since independence.
Unfortunately he seems to explore everything, sometimes in great depth, sometimes he acknowledges other, more comprehensive books have been written about this topic.
I can understand his dilemma, where do you begin to explain the history of two continents and 10-12 countries? Unfortunately I think this would have been better served by either being two volumes or starting as he intended, with the Monroe Doctrine. The first two thirds(!) of this is very in-depth and very sloggy, but it picks up speed in the modern era — exactly when Grandin starts to elide.
I did learn about many characters that were of course never explored in my education: especially Bartolomé de las Casas, Bolívar and Jorge Gaitán — and their rises and falls in influence and optimism.I also was extremely interested in the dashed dreams of New Deal-like reforms in Latin America, I didn’t realize the international reactionary movement once FDR exited the scene. But those characters and concepts are the bookends; the massive page count in between is hard to swallow.
Shewwww boy, this took me a long time to read, it is simply massive. Very very interesting but massive. I was particularly interested after reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and its idea of schismogenesis (how societies define themselves as separate from other societies) in the New World.
I think Grandin explores this idea (or something close to it) well. His central thesis — that the USA and Latin America owe as much if not more of their development to each other rather than their colonizers — I think is proven true. Then we have their complicated relationships since independence.
Unfortunately he seems to explore everything, sometimes in great depth, sometimes he acknowledges other, more comprehensive books have been written about this topic.
I can understand his dilemma, where do you begin to explain the history of two continents and 10-12 countries? Unfortunately I think this would have been better served by either being two volumes or starting as he intended, with the Monroe Doctrine. The first two thirds(!) of this is very in-depth and very sloggy, but it picks up speed in the modern era — exactly when Grandin starts to elide.
I did learn about many characters that were of course never explored in my education: especially Bartolomé de las Casas, Bolívar and Jorge Gaitán — and their rises and falls in influence and optimism.I also was extremely interested in the dashed dreams of New Deal-like reforms in Latin America, I didn’t realize the international reactionary movement once FDR exited the scene. But those characters and concepts are the bookends; the massive page count in between is hard to swallow.
Read
June 2, 2025shaped the United States. America, América may be his most ambitious effort yet. As Grandin explains, he planned to start with the Monroe Doctrine, but his editor convinced him to begin three centuries earlier with the Spanish Conquest. As a result, America, América is really two books, one nested inside the other.
The ‘inner book’ offers a well-substantiated case for the Latin American origins of an international order rooted in respect for borders and rejection of the right of conquest. Why were these origins Latin American? As Grandin explains, the US was born expansionist, its unrelenting push westward driven by the confluence of geopolitics, cotton capitalism, the opportunities of the frontier, and white supremacy. The republics of Spanish America, in contrast, emerged from their independence wars as a multi-nation community on a continent with fuzzy but mostly settled borders, whose indigenous peoples were treated as part of the national community rather than foreign nations with which one signs and then breaks treaties. Those republics also faced the theoretical threat of recolonisation by Europe and the not-theoretical threat of US annexation. It made sense that they would pioneer the idea of a global order guided by principles they called ‘American International Law’, seeking to constrain great-power ambition and protect the integrity of all nations as sovereign equals.
Read the rest of the review of https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
David S. Parker is Professor of History at Queen’s University, Canada.
The ‘inner book’ offers a well-substantiated case for the Latin American origins of an international order rooted in respect for borders and rejection of the right of conquest. Why were these origins Latin American? As Grandin explains, the US was born expansionist, its unrelenting push westward driven by the confluence of geopolitics, cotton capitalism, the opportunities of the frontier, and white supremacy. The republics of Spanish America, in contrast, emerged from their independence wars as a multi-nation community on a continent with fuzzy but mostly settled borders, whose indigenous peoples were treated as part of the national community rather than foreign nations with which one signs and then breaks treaties. Those republics also faced the theoretical threat of recolonisation by Europe and the not-theoretical threat of US annexation. It made sense that they would pioneer the idea of a global order guided by principles they called ‘American International Law’, seeking to constrain great-power ambition and protect the integrity of all nations as sovereign equals.
Read the rest of the review of https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
David S. Parker is Professor of History at Queen’s University, Canada.
October 6, 2025
Finished it! I learned so much and was able to connect and unify so much in my mind and understanding. Highly recommend. Makes me love our Latin American brothers and sisters even more because it helps me to understand their history even more. The struggle for justice and liberty for Latin America has never ceased, and anyone who knows knows. And this is a great reminder.
This is a brief visceral reaction, and I will try to return to make a proper review some time later. Unbelievably expansive in scope and concise for its comprehensiveness. Truly a history of the past that is incredibly relevant today.
I read Grandin's "End of the Myth" a couple of years ago, and it was amazing as well. Hoping to read all of his books.
This is a brief visceral reaction, and I will try to return to make a proper review some time later. Unbelievably expansive in scope and concise for its comprehensiveness. Truly a history of the past that is incredibly relevant today.
I read Grandin's "End of the Myth" a couple of years ago, and it was amazing as well. Hoping to read all of his books.
June 6, 2025
A magisterial work on the history of the western hemisphere. The USA's inability to commit to social rights has held us back, and rather than allow Latin America to fully act upon their commitment to theirs, we've tied one arm behind the Latinx population's collective back. A must-read to understand the politics of the now.
August 18, 2025
This book is excellent: the history I was never taught, but desperately needed! A must read for sure if you're from the U.S. Totally mind blowing in the best and worst ways. Not the most beginner friendly, but with a pace and prose that allows you to follow along. I won't be able to shut up about this book maybe ever!!
January 2, 2026
Well, I'm not exactly finished but, after slogging through more than 500 pages, I can't bring myself to read the last 130. The details are overwhelming. My sympathies to the Yale students who will be taking Greg Grandin's class.
July 30, 2025
A genuine masterwork. Covers hundreds of years of history in unbelievable detail - you can feel a lifetime of scholarship in each page. Required reading!
October 31, 2025
Amazing! Astonishing how much history he can fit in one book and how clearly he can write about it.
September 7, 2025
Brilliant; depressing; required reading
Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews