From the Bookshelves: The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin

NYU historian Greg Grandin has published a Putlizer Prize winning new book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (Macmillan 2020). As described in a New York Times book review: “Grandin explores the symbol of the border wall in the context of the United States’ historical Western expansion.” He states that the images of the frontier and the border were once interchangeable and not laden with emotional signfiicance. Over time, the frontier was laden with positive connotations of openesss and freedom and became foundation to the American identity. The border, in contrast, became linked to exclusion and crime. The transformation of meanings show, in Grandin’s words, “the death of our most potent myth—the galvanizing vision of men and women seeking freedom along a vast frontier, a space for reinvention, unburdened by society, history, and one’s own past. Instead, as the New Yorker remarks, linking the border with the frontier “reposition[s] race-based violence to the center of the frontier narrative, exposing it as foundational to today’s border brutalism.” More book reviews appear in the LA Times and The Nationhere.

This nuanced argument and corrective to history seems well-worth a careful read, and I’ve added it to my book order for perusal.

MHC