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About the Book
"As a boy, Robert Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father tell evocative stories about traveling across America in his youth, travels in which he learned to understand the country literally from the ground up. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation of American geography often lost in the jet age. Along the way, he witnesses both prosperity and decline--increasingly cosmopolitan cities that thrive on globalization, impoverished towns denuded by the loss of manufacturing--and paints a bracingly clear picture of America today. Kaplan lays bare the roots of American greatness--the fact that we are a nation, empire, and continent all at once--and how westward expansion shaped our national character, and should shape our foreign policy"--Provided by publisher.Book Synopsis
An incisive portrait of the American landscape that shows how geography continues to determine America's role in the world Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times - "There is more insight here into the Age of Trump than in bushels of political-horse-race journalism."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) At a time when there is little consensus about who we are and what we should be doing with our power overseas, a return to the elemental truths of the American landscape is urgently needed. In Earning the Rockies, New York Times bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan undertakes a cross-country journey, traversing a rich and varied landscape that still remains the primary source of American power. Traveling west, in the same direction as the pioneers, Kaplan witnesses both prosperity and decline, and reexamines the history of westward expansion in a new light: as a story not just of genocide and individualism but also of communalism and a respect for the limits of a water-starved terrain. Concluding at the edge of the Pacific Ocean with a gripping description of an anarchic world, Earning the Rockies shows how America's foreign policy response ought to be rooted in its own geographical situation. Praise for Earning the Rockies "Unflinchingly honest . . . a lens-changing vision of America's role in the world . . . a jewel of a book that lights the path ahead."--Secretary of Defense James Mattis "A sui generis writer . . . America's East Coast establishment has only one Robert Kaplan, someone as fluently knowledgeable about the Balkans, Iraq, Central Asia and West Africa as he is about Ohio and Wyoming."--Financial Times "Kaplan has pursued stories in places as remote as Yemen and Outer Mongolia. In Earning the Rockies, he visits a place almost as remote to many Americans: these United States. . . . The author's point is a good one: America is formed, in part, by a geographic setting that is both sanctuary and watchtower."--The Wall Street Journal "A brilliant reminder of the impact of America's geography on its strategy. . . . Kaplan's latest contribution should be required reading."--Henry A. Kissinger "A text both evocative and provocative for readers who like to think ... In his final sections, Kaplan discusses in scholarly but accessible detail the significant role that America has played and must play in this shuddering world."--Kirkus ReviewsReview Quotes
About the Author
Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of nineteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including The Good American, The Revenge of Geography Asia's Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world's Top 100 Global Thinkers.