America, América

A New York Times bestseller • A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, 2025 Kirkus Prize, 2025 Cundill History Prize, and 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker,The New Republic, and Mother Jones “Greg Grandin's argument is compelling and written with zest. His history is punchy, the array of sources is vast, and the narrative pace is superb.” —Financial Times “An extraordinarily ambitious book . . . America, América reads at times as the historical equivalent of the great epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez.” —Irish Times From the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Grandin reveals how the United States and Latin America were forged 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 world wars, coups, and revolutions of the twentieth century and beyond. Grandin’s book sheds new light on well-known historical figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as lesser-known actors such as Jorge Gaitán, whose unsolved murder inaugurated the rise of cold war political terror. At once comprehensive and accessible, this monumental work of scholarship shows that centuries of bloodshed and diplomacy not only helped shape the political identities of the Western Hemisphere 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.

Greg Grandin is the author of The End of the Myth, which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Empire of Necessity, which won both the Bancroft and Beveridge prizes in American history; Fordlandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and a number of other widely acclaimed books. He is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University.

CONTENTS Introduction: On the Utility of Magpies xix PART I TO BEGIN IN WONDER: THE SPANISH 1. Leaves of Grass 3 2. There Is Only One World 12 3. Ego Vox 20 4. Goodbye Aristotle 29 5. New Laws 41 6. Bartolomé’s Many Ghosts 53 PART II EMPTY HOUSES: THE ENGLISH 7. Empty Houses 69 8. Irish Tactics 81 9. Lost in the World’s Debate 94 10. The Western Design 106 11. Opening the Mexican Fountain 120 PART III AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS 12. Three Kings 131 13. Come the Crows 145 14. Grand Strategies 156 15. The Ambiguity in Which We Live 168 16. War to the Death 184 PART I V UNION/ DESUNIÓN 17. A Kind of International Law for America 201 18. The Balancing Power: Monroe’s Doctrine 215 19. As You Possess 224 20. This American Party 233 21. Sister Nations 242 22. Torments 252 PART V YOUNG AMERICANS 23. The March of God 265 24. Two Americas 281 25. Lincoln Belongs to Us 292 26. Twilight 303 27. America for Humanity 317 28. Tar Wars 330 PART V I TOWARD A WORLD DOCTRINE 29. Mexico’s Revolution 345 30. Wilson’s Dilemma 359 31. Monroe Doctrine of the Future 375 32. Subsoil Socialism 382 33. Bolívar Dreamt 390 34. Death and the Salesmen 401 PART V II LABORATORY OF THE WORLD 35. To Montevideo 417 36. The So‑ Called Right of Conquest 430 37. Hell Bent for Reelection 438 38. The Faith of the Americas 450 39. Laboratory of the World 461 40. Battle for Latin America 476 41. A People’s War 489 42. There Would Have Been Nothing 503 PART V III THE K ILLING OF JORGE ELIÉCER GAITÁN 43. Underdeveloped Economists 515 44. A Chapter on Latin America 526 45. The Killing of Gaitán 536 46. A Red Masterpiece 552 47. Peace, Peace, Don’t Kill Us 562 48. The Perpetual Rhythm of Struggle 571 49. War of the Gods, or, A Second Enlightenment 581 50. Restoring the Magisterium 597 Epilogue America, América 617 Acknowledgments 631 Notes 633 Illustration Credits 715 Index 717