Ben Waber reviewed Continental Reckoning by Elliott West
A Revelatory Dive into the Violent Expansion of the US
5 stars
West provides an extremely insightful, detailed examination of the formative decades around the full expansion of the US to the West Coast, analyzing how technology, interactions between cultures, economics, and the environment wrought profound changes on this region. These were each powerful forces in their own right, and West gives them their due through methodical chapters that demonstrate how technological change supercharged the dispossessive, commercially expansionist, violent, and environmentally destructive tendencies of the East Coast as its people drove into these already inhabited lands. This book treats this period with nuance and revels in the complexity, and while you'll find some of this research elsewhere I can't think of another book that holistically encapsulates these phenomena so effectively. Highly recommend
West provides an extremely insightful, detailed examination of the formative decades around the full expansion of the US to the West Coast, analyzing how technology, interactions between cultures, economics, and the environment wrought profound changes on this region. These were each powerful forces in their own right, and West gives them their due through methodical chapters that demonstrate how technological change supercharged the dispossessive, commercially expansionist, violent, and environmentally destructive tendencies of the East Coast as its people drove into these already inhabited lands. This book treats this period with nuance and revels in the complexity, and while you'll find some of this research elsewhere I can't think of another book that holistically encapsulates these phenomena so effectively. Highly recommend