On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by award winning historian, Greg Grandin to talk about his new book, America, América: A New History of the New World. Grandin’s book tells the story of the Americas plural, and how the creation of concepts like humanity, sovereignty, abolition, and emancipation grew out of European conquest of the Western Hemisphere. 

The book’s thesis is represented in its two word title, America, América. Grandin focuses on the period between Spanish conquest and the Monroe Doctrine and how the US came to understand itself as a nation in relation to the rest of the Western Hemisphere, not just to Europe. Grandin and Ruff discuss the ways that different colonial powers rationalized colonization and how this period gave rise to what Grandin calls the “liberal international order.” 

Grandin describes how he wrote his new book in the time between the two Trump presidencies and how Trump threatens the liberal international order. He says that the problems that the US faces can’t be solved by asserting power over Latin America.

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

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.

Featured image of the cover of Greg Grandin’s book, America, América: A New History of the New World  via Penguin Press.

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