An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future

by Robert D. Kaplan

"Full of surprises and unusual revelations . . . an informed and disturbing portrait of the new American badlands."-- Chicago Tribune

"[Kaplan is] tireless, curious, and smart. . . . I cannot imagine anyone will concoct a more convincing scenario for the American future." --Thurston Clarke,   The New York Times

With the same prescience and eye for telling detail that distinguished his bestselling Balkan Ghosts , Robert Kaplan now explores his native country, the United States of America. His starting the conviction that America is a country not in decline but in transition, slowly but inexorably shedding its identity as a monolithic nation-state and assuming a radically new one.
        Everywhere Kaplan travels--from St. Louis, Missouri, to Portland, Oregon, from the forty-ninth parallel to the banks of the Rio Grande--he finds an America ever more fragmented along lines of race, class, education, and geography. An America whose wealthy communities become wealthier and more fortress-like as they become more closely linked to the world's business capitals than to the desolate ghettoes next door. An America where the political boundaries between the states--and between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico--are becoming increasingly blurred, betokening a vast open zone for trade, commerce, and cultural interaction, the nexus of tomorrow's transnational world. Never nostalgic or falsely optimistic, bracingly unafraid of change and its consequences, Kaplan paints a startling portrait of post-Cold War America--a great nation entering the final, most uncertain phase of its history. Here is travel writing with the force of prophecy.

"Lively . . . Kaplan has a sharp eye for social truth, and his encounters with a chorus of eloquent citizens of the West keeps the narrative humming." -- Outside

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Politics, United States, American History, American

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Robert David Kaplan is an American journalist, currently a National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His writings have also been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs and The Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers and publications, and his more controversial essays about the nature of U.S. power have spurred debate in academia, the media, and the highest levels of government. A frequent theme in his work is the reemergence of cultural and historical tensions temporarily suspended during the Cold War.

Reviews

[Peggy Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the reviewers below describe this fascinating book as depressing or even dystopian, and in a sense it is. But it is also a reminder that the United States of America, for all its mythology of exceptionalism, will not be spared the fate of all "empires". Human and historical and geographic forces will overpower all myths. Those of us who used to take solace in the protection that our Constitution offered now fear that it can only go so far. Kaplan wrote this book in the 90's; his clear-eyed analysis predicted exactly what has come to pass in our time. Is it depressing? When you think of all the people who have been crushed by the steamroller of history in our nation, yes it is. We Americans like to assign blame, but Kaplan only assigns cause. If you need to blame, then blame human nature, the march of history and the very land itself.

[Pat Rolston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy good travel writing and have read most all things by Paul Theroux. Where Theroux writes from a perspective that captures the range of human behaviors from the comic to the absurd to the profound Mr. Kaplan may be classed as one who distills the culture and social trends into a futurist commentary.

In this case being my first Kaplan book I did not have any expectations and it was a used book that was basically free. As such I really enjoyed the experience and as one who used to enjoy science fiction in my youth it really came off as a dystopian chronicle of the USA in style and substance. There are indeed hopeful moments, but they are all tempered by the obvious overarching theme that change is afoot and that change will not be resulting in the standard notion of America you may hold dear. I don't say this in a negative way as it really worked for me and given the benefit of being predictions for the mid 1990s it made it that much more fascinating allowing for the real life comparison to his speculation as to our current reality.

If you are one predisposed to a nationalist ideology or have strong feelings about American exceptionalism your worldview will be challenged. On the other hand if you believe, "things just don't seem quite right" you will be given reasons that is so with root causes that transcend the mindless blather spewed via the endless mind numbing propaganda that dominates today's conventional media of TV and printed news. I will continue the reading of good travel writers and next will pick up, "Blue Highways, Journey into America," as this seems to have put me in the mood for another form of this genre more focused on self discovery.

[Rebecca Wilkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book written in the mid 90's. Sure wish he would write a new one to update what has happened in the last 20 years.
Later: He did write a new book EARNING THE ROCKIES. See my review of that.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book predicting North American political and social trends in the 21st century, Robert Kaplan gets the little things wrong but the big ones right. As with his other books, he has an eye for the telling details that add up to big picture truths. The trips he made for this book were taken in the latter half of the 90s, so more than twenty years have passed and yet Empire Wilderness is still worth reading. Kaplan specializes in insight, and here he is at his best.

It starts with a simple observation about geography, “While Europe has had too much history and not enough geography, America has had relatively little history and plenty of geography.” There is always somewhere else you can move to if you are trying to move up, or trying to leave something behind. Kaplan’s first observations are about the decaying cores of inner cities, abandoned by their white residents, starved of resources by the loss of their tax base, and increasingly left to simply deteriorate, people as well as buildings. “America’s geographical advantage—the vast empty tracts beyond the older suburbs with their low real estate values, especially compared to those of Europe and East Asia—allows the middle class to move further and further away from the disruptive poor and thus avoid, among other things, local taxes for social programs that may—or may not—work.” He visits East St. Louis, mired in decay, and talks to city leaders about what would be required to resurrect it. The suggestions are good and reasonable, so what happened in the twenty years since he was there? Nothing happened, and it now shows up on every list of the most dangerous cities in America.

He then looks at the towns growing up beyond the urban fringe of the great decaying cities. “Suburbanization here does not mean decentralization as much as it does jurisdictional sovereignty for well-off whites so they can isolate themselves from the problems of predominantly black inner cities.” He makes note of what will become a recurring theme in this book, that highly educated, mobile workers will increasingly have more in common with their peers in other countries than they will with many of their fellow countrymen. “As the income gap widens, the American middle class continues to split into an increasingly rarefied upper middle class and an increasingly downtrodden lower middle class, as the middle middle slowly fades into one or the other.”

He visits Mexico and bluntly assesses its stability and likely impact on the United States in the coming decades. Once again his observations show remarkable foresight, since the problems Mexico was facing then have only been exacerbated by the passage of time.

Tijuana ... illustrates the jarring divide between the United States, a society governed through flexible and interlocking jurisdictions, and Mexico, an oligarchal tyranny that does not really govern at all. The multibillion-dollar narcotics trade in Mexico is simply too vast to be dismissed as ‘illegal.’ It is the heart of the Mexican economy and constitutes the principal economic fact of life for the southern part of North America at the turn of the twenty-first century.

He also observes that “Unlike the former Soviet Union, Mexico’s party despotism has never been guided by an ideology or the pretense of one. It exists for crime, whether in the form of patronage and nepotism at the top or armed robbery at the lower reaches.”

Kaplan makes a very astute point about illegal immigration and the drug economy,

The factors that have kept Mexico at bay so far—drug profits and the sent-home wages of illegal aliens—are the very ones Washington claims it wants to stop. But without drugs and illegals, the United States might face what it has always feared, a real revolution in Mexico and true chaos on the border. To deprive Mexico of its largest sources of income would threaten the collapse of the country’s central authority.

He then places that observation into its historical context:

During the Mexican Revolution and its attendant civil wars between 1910 and 1922, more than 10 percent of Mexico’s population of 13 million fled to the United States. Now, as Mexico’s population climbs past 100 million [123 million in 2017, according to Wikipedia], imagine the level of militarization and domination by Washington required to control a comparative flood of refugees, were Mexico’s central government to undergo an unruly meltdown into a weak tributary state system.

Returning to the U.S., he picks up another theme that recurs throughout the book, once again correctly foreshadowing major issues the American west is only now beginning to take seriously: growing populations and declining water resources.

Any place with less than twenty inches of yearly rainfall—a category that includes almost all the American West—will sustain a human population only with difficulty, and a place like Tucson, Phoenix, or El Paso in the Southwest, with sometimes less than eight inches of rain per year, is perhaps no place to inhabit at all.” Aquifers are being depleted, rivers drained, there is less and less water for more and more people, and still cities, desperate for the tax revenue, continue to allow the building of more subdivisions, office parks, and malls. At some point the allocation of water will become adversarial rather than cooperative, as it is already on its way to doing.

As the crime rates and the hollowing out of downtown showed, the social and communal fabric appeared to be fraying at the very moment in southwestern history when it is needed in the oncoming battle for water.

There is an interesting interlude when he talks about the social structures that help bind a community together, one of which is sports. He attends a college basketball game and observes that it is “a sanitized colosseum sport. The blunt racial fact—that the audience was white and most of the players black—went either unnoticed, disregarded, or channeled into positive feelings. The shrieking blond crowd and the sweating black players may indicate a society’s way of coping with racial tensions rather than dramatizing them, as in ancient Rome.”

He then heads into the Great Plains, the last settled frontier, where tiny towns are slowly dying while clinging to hope that their hometown charm will lead people to move there and save them. Recent history has not borne out a trend in this direction, so if those places were circling the drain in the late 90s, they are probably ghost towns today. Kaplan observes that the vast uniformity of the landscape enhances a feeling of sameness and solidarity, and the people he talked too were very wary of the Asian and Latino immigrants that were starting to show up in their towns. He notes that even religion seems defensive in the vast remoteness of the Plains, “I saw a number of signs proclaiming ‘Jesus Is the Lord. Yet again, the need to proclaim the obvious suggested the insecurity of the believers. “

And then once again he seems to address our times directly. He is talking about the militias which were perceived to be a problem in the 90s, but his description of them as angry and alienated sounds like it is describing America of today as he quotes one of the people he interviewed, “These are people who can barely speak without profanities: like, ‘Why the fuck should I vote?’ Besides being uneducated, they often have records of petty crime which prevent them from getting decent jobs. If they are not on welfare or unemployment insurance, they work as night clerks at convenience stores and, as they will tell you, ‘defend the U.S.A. on weekends.’ With social change so dramatic, there are just more and more losers out there.” Almost as an aside, again seeming to speak to our times, Kaplan says, “The last thing America needs … is more voters—especially badly educated and alienated ones—with a passion for politics.”

Finally, he heads north into Canada, through the Upper Great Plains where environmentalists face off against corporate logging companies, and sees unsustainable growth and diminishing water availability. He visits Vancouver and once again makes the point that the high tech workers who are part of a globalized economy have more in common with one another than they do with most of their fellow citizens.

Kaplan takes all these observations and puts them together into logical predictions that have not occurred, although the arc of history is long, so he might yet be seen as a prophet. First, he sees the greater and greater irrelevance of centralized governments, and predicts that they will eventually be stripped of their authority over anything except truly national responsibilities, such as defense. What actually happened, of course, was 9/11, which has made government larger and more intrusive than ever. In a similar vein, he seemed certain that Canada would break up after the secession of Quebec, and believed that a new entity, Cascadia, would come into existence combining Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. There is no sign of that, perhaps because ever more seamless internet connections allow virtual integration without the encumbrance of an aggregated social and political structure.

This is an amazing book. Kaplan may have gotten his predictions wrong (or at least, wrong for the time being), but he was able to sort through the clutter of competing social, economic, and technological forces to find the key drivers that influence us today, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. Crumbling and abandoned cities, crime and immigration, water shortages, angry, often uninformed voters willing to elect anyone who reflects their prejudices, and the high tech future for those with the education and skills to grasp it. The book does not leave you with a hopeful attitude, but realism is always better than comforting lies. One bright spot is that America continues to attract smart and talented people from across the globe, and if we can get over the notion that the only true Americans are the ones whose forefathers came from Europe, we can perhaps emerge stronger than before. In the end, perhaps, a “state of mind, rather than a religious denomination or a linguistic style, is what defines America.”

[Jason Chiang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this is a fairly old book (published in 1998), I enjoyed reading this book and seeing the perspective of this Atlantic (Monthly) associated writer. I agree that many of his predictions from back then have held true today. Overall, great quality writing and i loved the insights he provided on the US cities that he visited while conceptualizing this book, and his comparisons with his more famous works overseas.

[Fadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Het boek is inmiddels 24 jaar oud, maar daardoor niet minder interessant of informatief. Vooral heerlijk om over het Amerikaanse landschap te lezen in combinatie met demografische, economische informatie en de ontwikkelingen van steden. Zeer goed

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Around 1995, Kaplan traveled along the southern states and the Pacific Northwest and relates his experiences in this book. His comments are mostly about the history of the locales that he goes to, the patriotism of the American nation and the urban planning of its cities (or lack thereof).

He comments on the policy vacuum in cities like St Louis, the coming wrongheadedness of individualism, or the Asianization of Cascadia. A great book that broadens one's horizons.

A highlight of the book is the section around Tucson. He serves a solid blow to the policies of that city:

'What the [low] voter turnout actually suggested is that the vast majority of residents were unconcerned about this and other communal issues. While a community might exist among scientists around the globe studying the chemistry of the brain -- [referencing a previous encounter] -- it might not exist from one street to the next in Tucson because there are no streets. And as the crime rates and the hollowing out of downtown showed, the social and communal fabric appeared to be fraying at the very moment in southwestern history when it is needed in the oncoming battle for water. The transnational, mestizo-Polynesian Tucson of the future -- one of twenty-first-century North America's economic junction points for the world's most talented individuals -- will requirethe opposite of individualism. It will need communalism merely to survive.' p.175-176

He goes on later in the book:

'There may be so little holding these western cities together that a basketball team is all there is: it's a sports team, a symphony orchestra, and a church rolled into one," said a Tucson sociologist. "Since neither Tucson, nor any other city with a big state university, can find the talent locally, community self-esteem becomes a matter of which southwestern city can hire the largest number of talented blacks from far away to represent it." [...] Basketball is a sanitized colosseum sport.' p.154

[Mike Keane · Rating 5 out of 5]

kaplan has an awesome process for writing - travel. his predictive, historic, social commentary is informed by an examination of cultural geography, urban planning and demographic shifts. He looks at the big picture. he isn't afraid to go to the worst places in order to understand them and works to solve problems through his writing and analysis. for those interested in urban planning, public policy, geography, history, etc. This is somewhat dense and not a quick read but worth the effort.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was enlightening, not only about America but to the perspective of Robert D. Kaplan. Watching somebody describe themselves, you get a feel for what they think is noteworthy and important. You understand better the lens through which they judge that which is around them. For a writer, it then allows you to reinterpret their other observations.

Kaplan is a civilizational writer. He sees the world through the slow movement of culture over immutable geography. Layers upon layers of stories written by ordinary people or exceptional figures, each part of the developing plot. Some are a letter or a sentence or a paragraph. There are those who are important who wouldn’t seem to be so; others who we think are epic figures who turn out to be sub-plots or minor characters in the story of somebody else (sort of how it turns out that Putin is only a minor character in Zelensky’s epic).

America, for Kaplan, is a land which has preferential geography. “American exceptionalism” he writes “is the possession of the last un-inhabited chunk of the world’s temperate zone”. But a land upon which no stories are written. The ancient Anasazi or Navajo didn’t leave anything (unlike the Inca or Aztecs); because there was no need for epic acts of engineering which created totalitarian bureaucracies in those places, or Rome – for water was everywhere and taming it is only a modern American problem – there has been no need for centralized government and the violence that accompanies it. Sort of Tocquevillian, but different. For Kaplan, stories of America are wiped away as soon as they are finished to be rebuilt by somebody else into something different. Unlike Tiwanaku or the Roman aqueducts which retain vestiges of the past in the constructs of now, ours are wholly different and erase that which came before. The rust belt become condos; the Chicago Projects become a Whole Foods.

“Empire Wilderness” is a book of tremendous scholarship; it is Kaplan after all. A writer of great learning. It is probably the closest that he will come to an auto-biography; he is after all writing about his own land. I wonder if he sees himself in the characters of his book? If so, that is telling as well. It’s a good book, as everything Kaplan writes is good. And there is some wonder in it; wonder is Kaplan’s calling card. But the book is strange, because it does not evince a love of America. It is not even written with nostalgia or sympathy of the familiar. It does not echo with stories of little league games or ball parks or summers at the beach. It is a hard book, about race more than my generation thinks; and Kaplan seethes with contempt for some of the walk-ons. The denizens of the bus stops; the slot-players in the casinos. The romanticism he has for Romanian peasants – his favorite – he does not share for our own. It’s natural, that which is exotic we sometimes feel is more pregnant with meaning than that which is around our corner or sitting on our front step. But I would have expected more tenderness for our rough-and-tumble land and the epic stories we also have – Bisbee and Tombstone and Dodge City. New York and Hollywood. Reading this book, one would wonder how in fact America came to command the world. And that, I think, is probably a fault. Stories need to answer the central theme or question from which they are aroused. That is America’s question. I’ll have to look somewhere else for the answer.

[Antonio Moreno Pini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kaplan a finales de los años 90 del siglo XX realiza un viaje por el sur- suroeste de los estados Unidos y el Noroeste de México y la Colombia Británica (Area de Vancouver). En este viaje nos muestra las particularidades de cada estado, ciudad, teniendo como tesis principal el cambio de un entorno urbano a uno post-urbano ( definido como ciduades grandes que son administradas y reguladas en diferentes municipios, como es el caso de Los Angeles). También muestra las diferenciales sociales debido a la raza y como cada raza se distribuye en unas zonas determinadas de cada estado o cada ciudad ( en sus barrios), las inicativas que a nivel publico (pocas) o a nivekl privado se usan para mejorar la calidad ee vida de unos barrios abandonados por los municipios y sin servicios públicos o incluso cines ( en algún caso el cine mas cercano en un entorno urbano esta a 10 Kms.).

Aprovecha también para explicar el descubrimiento por parte de los españoles (Coronado) o las expediciones de Lewis y Clarke y sus primeros pobladores, como han evolucionado y como se ve el futuro.

Hay también un apunte de los elementos cohesionadores como nación, el sentir patriótico que va variando con el tiempo, el lugar la raza. Un punto importante es la visión de que un Oeste casi virgen, en el sentido de que no habia habido explotación agrícola, minera o ganadera, permitió que EEUU se convirtiese en una potencia mundial. Una vez colonizado y explotado todo puede ser que a lo largo del siglo XX, esa ventaja competitiva desaparezca y la globalización vaya expandiendose así como la mejora de las comunicaciones gracias a Internet y su impacto.

El viaje comienza en una base militar americana, que paradójicamente es el punto de mayor igualdad entre las personas (raza y religión no es importante) y acaba en Vicksburg, donde Ulises Grant toma el fuerte y da un giro a la Guerra de Secesión.

Este viaje plural y variado es muy esclarecedor del sentir de las gentes que viven en esos territorios y como se relacionan con el mundo, Recomendable su lectura aunque con la perspectiva del tiempo, ahora mas de 15 años, muchas predicciones no se han cumplido a nivel estatl, pero probablemente si a nivel local.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's interesting to read this almost two decades after the fact and see how his prognostication has ended up. His core vs periphery has somewhat played out with "superstar" cities vs the rest. But his dire pronouncements for black majority cities like St. Louis seem absolutist and serves to rehash every "crack era" stereotype. Granted urban renewal was just in it's earliest stages back then, but places like Omaha and St. Louis didn't and haven't died even if growth rates weren't in the league of Seattle or Portland.

His predictions for the Pacific Northwest though were spot on. Kaplan saw the benefit of their global orientation, and the benefit of heterogeneity in a place like Vancouver. He also described the birth of mega-regions like Cascadia. His depiction of largely immigrant Oklahoma and Kansas was interesting as both cities discussed survive but in radically forms

Kaplan is at his best the less familiar the places he writes about. His Eurocentric views are readily apparent everywhere, but his ability to synthesize history, geography, culture, and governance are unparalleled. However, on the domestic front, the sometimes jarring racism, classicism, and outright contempt for the "unwashed masses" in depictions like those at the Greyhound station is deeply troubling. Also troubling too is his depiction of Mexico, clearly a place he sees as unable to rise above his stereotypes.

Ultimately his pronouncement is dire. The last two decades of largely uninterrupted economic growth, the rise of new power cities away from the coast, and the urban rebirth everywhere have largely proven his conclusions false.

[Nicole Jarjour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this over the course of the year - it was my kitchen table book that I would pick up if I was eating alone. I love Robert Kaplan - I think he's a superb reporter, observer of people, and interpreter of our world. This book was written in 1997 so it's super interesting to see which predictions of his came true and which didn't. Or more like, which predictions ring true now and which didn't really turn out?
The Canadian border has not dissolved.
The Mexican border is porous
Pharmaceutical drugs play an even bigger role
Tech influences have increased
Ties with Asia to the PNW have increased
Urban states in the large metropolitan areas: no comment. Don't know the areas he was talking about very well.
Our military is increasingly constrained and unsupported by the general population
He believes our economic dynamism is linked to impermanence and starting anew on a regular basis.
He has more recent books on the US. I should follow up with those.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent Kaplan to read and keep on the bookshelf. In many respects it may be a better read now than when it was first published in the 1990s. He certainly made a lot of astute observations like the hollowing out of the cities, the declining ideals of community and patriotism and the internal and external migration patterns. This was published before 9/11, the full effects of NAFTA and the huge influx of young, single, Mexican workers (the current migration patterns being different).
Of course one thinks of Trump while reading this, but it goes to show that he is merely a vitriolic and savage extension of the hollowing out and divisions in America that have been percolating for quite a while and are simply speed racing at this point as fast as technology allows.

[Kasey Lawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

“To get away. Away from what? In the long run away from themselves,” D.H. Lawrence wrote about the American urge to escape. Maybe so. Perhaps only after democracy slips away, silently replaced by the power of corporations and other great concentrations of wealth in a society whose basic instincts are tranquilized by pharmaceuticals, masturbatory gambling, and the voyeurism of colosseum sports, will the true destiny of America reveal itself.”

[Monwar Hussain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb insights, rare writing by an astute observer of modern civilization. Not all insights translate to the future but that's okay

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boek geschreven over het einde van Amerika in 1998... lol
Geen wonder dat het gratis mee te nemen was in de bib. Desalniettemin behoorlijk boeiend!

[Blaine Welgraven · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It’s nonsense to think that Americans are individualists. Deep down, we are a nation of herd animals: mouselike conformists who will lay at the doorstep all of our right—if you tell us that we don’t have to worry about crime and that our property values will be protected. Just look at the suburbs. We are going to depend less and less on the public sphere.” — Dennis Judd, Professor of Urban Affairs, University of Missouri

“Alex de Tocqueville and others warned that material prosperity in American might ultimately breed withdrawal. As material wealth increases within a society along with technological conveniences, people’s personal lives become more complex, with new choices and stresses, leaving them with less time and energy for communal concerns….Are we, I wondered, increasingly a nation of overworked, lonely people?” — Robert D. Kaplan, An Empire Wilderness

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

[★★★★☆-4/5]

If all of our human behavior could be explained through simple logic, probably everything would be tremendously easier. Mass transit, for one, would be a lot better, and with logical, rational food-distribution, we'd have feeding troughs running into inner cities. Fresh vegetables! Plenty of fruits! Less red meat!

Unfortunately, we're quite the illogical species. It means more Big Macs and more Whoppers. It means the disorderly / anarchistic / world-leading USA.

The story of how I got this book might be an illustration of the limits of human logic. I was at the used bookstore--the expensive one-- and considering putting down $5 for two or three different possibilities (vaguely remember one being a famous military sci fi work; another being something guaranteed to be fair--not poor and not good, but at $5 for a book, who's to say...). Then I saw AN EMPIRE WILDERNESS. For some reason, most likely because I've heavily discussed Victor Davis Hanson, I kept confusing the author. The little data storage point in my head said-- keen Republican, great writer, definite value. The bookstore wanted over $9 for this book that new retails for $14. Ouch. But the counter-thought kept intruding: hey, how much is just food for a day. How much versus the learning, the life-time ownership, the guaranteed (thanks to goodreads and all this review writing which allows for better scientific bookselection) Good Read.

So I bought in. It wasn't until I finished, that I realized Kaplan is the guy who fought in wars, killed 10 people, laid with 1000 teenage Thai hookers. His jaded, jaded voice is the super-annuated and super-knowledgeable analysis of things beyond explanation. He embedded with mujahideen in SOLDIERS OF GOD. He predicted THE COMING ANARCHY. He visited THE IMPERIAL GRUNTS. He went to THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. All 4s or 5s.

Maybe I was a trifle generous with COMING ANARCHY? And perhaps the argument could be made this is a 3.7 rather than a 4.0? But goodreads.com doesn't permit decimal or half-star ratings... and 3.7 probably rounds up to 4.0 rather than 3.5 in any case. Maybe I'd push for 3.8 in any case. In fact, why not, call it a 3.9

There are heaps of matters to discuss about Kaplan, most complicatedly being his very slight centre-right political views, his compliments about business, his elitism. Yet, in contrast to the definite-right stance I was expecting, there were moments of sympathy for hard-knocked Latinos and some of Kaplan's vision of a patchwork American West don't seem entirely negative.

plusses: in truth, it's hard to write about 'continental us;'-- most stories are in san francisco or new york; Kaplan is very skilled and very fluent;

minuses: touch of militarism? elitism?

overall, I'm still a little miffed at myself that I laid out 9 sheets for this, but, then, there's no way i'm ever selling it from my bookshelf. and the really great writers who produce half a dozen great non-fiction books are few few few and far between.

other bloggish notes: K-pop "Crayon Pop" is hot.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was lengthy and depressing. It predicts a future for the U.S. that is increasingly economically hierarchic, in which the rich live increasingly in gated, guarded "pods", more connected to foreigners via the internet than they are to their geographical neighbors of different races and classes, and in which ultimately current boundaries (and nationalisms) erode. His writing about current borders not making sense and how they came to be is interesting and thought provoking. His description and analysis of Tucson and the southwest where I live was very accurate and insightful so from that I assume that his analysis of the other places featured, notably St. Louis and Vancouver are of equal quality. Certainly current events in St. Louis seem to bear this out. I think it's correct that if our current trajectory does not change, Kaplan presents a good description of where we will end up. The problem is that I think it's extremely unlikely that we will not change our trajectory before we get there. And since his thesis rests entirely on the implicit idea that we won't change, I found myself wondering what was the point of this book.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take Kaplan's travel writing seriously, but not his insights into America's future.

This is an above-average travel book...nothing more. If you hope to read about interesting physical and social geographies and thought-provoking viewpoints about the future of the American west, you will not be disappointed. Kaplan is a good travel writer.

Even though Kaplan expresses well-reasoned opinions (some of which I agreed with), this is not a comprehensive study of trends and statistics foretelling America's future. In fact, Kaplan often misinterprets the small amount of data he cites. Kaplan's evidence is anecdotal, not comprehensive, and his viewpoints tend to the extreme, which is fine for a travel book...which this book is.

Kaplan is very good at combining descriptions of physical geography with tales of historical figures and events.

I hope he never interviews me because he tends to portray his interviewees as idiots.

[Ulises · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lo largo de su viaje, el autor analiza la relevancia que tendrá -o que ya está teniendo- la consolidación de las ciudades-estado como contrapeso al gobierno federal, gracias al reordenamiento de los intereses económicos en Estados Unidos; para ello aborda tópicos como el localismo y el nacionalismo en diversas regiones de dicho país.
Pero curiosamente, y aunque comprendo su impacto sobre México, este libro me ha hecho pensar menos en el futuro de aquel país que en lo siguiente: ¿qué sería de la historia de estos dos países si Francisco Vázquez de Coronado hubiese proseguido con su expedición? Robert D. Kaplan menciona que el explorador, cansado de atravesar la zona árida y desilusionado por no encontrar las míticas ciudades repletas de oro, dio la media vuelta justo al borde de la tierra fértil y regresó al actual México.
El hubiera no existe, pero le pone alas a la imaginación.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author travelled extensively around the United States, Mexico, and Canada, talking to people and trying to determine the future of the North American region. He was too optimistic. Although he saw the rise of a drug culture in Mexico, he also predicted that the international borders both north and south would become less significant and that in fact, the Pacific Northwest might even merge with Western British Columbia to become a unified economy. (Quebec seemed on the verge of seceeding from Canada then.) Written in 1997, this book predates the terrorist attackes of 9/11, the Great Recession, and the resulting wars and economic uncertainties that those events ushered in. Still it was interesting to read of his travels to little known communities and the people he encountered.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bleak look at the hollowing out of the civic heart of America. Kaplan was writing just as the old century ended, but his thoughts are no less applicable in post-2008 post-Meltdown America: a vision of a globalised entrepreneurial and financial class floating above broken national boundaries; fortified suburbs and wealthy urban enclaves hived off and separated by private security from decaying city cores; and a middle class broken by global competition for lower wages. It's really Wm. Gibson's world...only with less drama and no social safety net.

[Maryanne]

An Empire Wilderness 07222010 - Into America's Future by Robert D. Kaplan
Tocqueville
The Man Without Qualities by robert Musil
The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History by Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes
History of Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Bridge by Hart Crane poem 1930
Bernard De Voto histories of the West
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leaconk's collection of stories - see Jack Hodgins's Canadians love law and order-the policemanis a national symbol
Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach
Leaves of Grass by Whitman Walden by Thoreau

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although written in 1998, the themes of poverty, racial segregation and the polarization along economic and racial lines are playing out before our eyes. It is depressing to see what is happening in Ferguson, Baltimore, and other suburbs and cities as our inability as a country to significantly change through education opportunities for the forgotten is reaping a whirlwind of violence and disparity. This book forces you to think about the Mexican retaking of the Southwest and what the future may hold for our nation.

[Mark Selby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads like a compliation of magazine articals. The author was a writer for The Atlantic. While the book is over ten years old now, it is interesting to compare his predictions to what is now occuring. Also, the author travels to several western cities with which I am acquainted. So interesting to read his take of each. Kaplan discusses geography and determination, which is the subject of his current book.

[Ryan Sencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been talking about aspects of this book with family, friends, my wife (she's sick of hearing about it), and colleagues. It is a wonderfully insightful look into what "frontier America" is becoming or may have already become. Some of the figures and facts may be a little dated, but the spirit with which Kaplan writes and analyzes is still alive and current.

[Zarthas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A low-key book about the southwestern American states that is a little slow going but if you stick it out, the rewards are in the journey. His description of the Canyon de Chelly was such that I arranged to visit the canyon with a Navajo guide on a visit to Arizona. I wasn't disappointed, it is an incredible place with an elegance of its own and a must-see if you ever get to visit the area.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rambling and periodically incoherent look at the disintegration of American civic and social culture, An Empire Wilderness is, nonetheless, curiously prescient for a book written in the late-20th century. Kaplan's predictions surrounding transnational immigration, intrastate emigration, and the increasing divide over federal authority ring predominately true two decades later.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been an admirer of Robert Kaplan for many years. This account of a drive west with significant stops along the way, and insightful interviews with various individuals results in a very perceptive look at the country we are in the process of becoming.