Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World

149 Pages·2017·5.5 MB·English

by  Robert D. Kaplan

Copyright © 2017 by Robert D. Kaplan
Map copyright © 2017 by David Lindroth Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random
House LLC, New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random
House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
NAMES: Kaplan, Robert D., author. TITLE: Earning the Rockies : how geography shapes
America’s role in the world / Robert D. Kaplan. DESCRIPTION: New York : Random House,
[2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2016013488 | ISBN
9780399588211 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9780399588235 (ebook) SUBJECTS: LCSH: United States—
Geography. | United States—Description and travel. | Kaplan, Robert D.—Travel—United States. |
Landscapes— Social aspects—United States. | City and town life—United States. | United States—
Social conditions—1980– | United States—Territorial expansion. | Imperialism—History. |
National characteristics, American. | United States—Foreign relations—Philosophy.
CLASSIFICATION: LCC E161.3 .K37 2017 | DDC 306.097309/048—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016013488
Ebook ISBN 9780399588235
randomhousebooks.com
Title-page images © iStock
Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Gabrielle Bordwin
Cover images (top to bottom): Max Cornelius, Rocky Mountains (19th cent.); map of Denver (U.S.
Geological Survey/Historical Topographic Map Collection); topographic contour lines (Getty
Images/Timothy Messick); Colorado relief map (Getty Images/Planet Observer/Universal Images
Group)
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Invocation
Chapter I: Earning the Rockies
Chapter II: A Continental Empire
Chapter III: Notes on a Vertical Landscape
Chapter IV: Notes on a Horizontal Landscape
Chapter V: Cathay
Epilogue
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Some Works Relevant to the Text
Notes
By Robert D. Kaplan
About the Author
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometimes sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
—HART CRANE, “TO BROOKLYN BRIDGE,” 1930

Detail left
Detail right
INVOCATION
T
o use the words of the poet William Carlos Williams, the object is to
describe a giant—the United States—out of particulars:1 in this case, a
father’s memories of travel, a historian’s geography of hope, a desert of
biblical proportions, and an ocean advancing toward China. The father
provides the inspiration; the historian the necessary and operable myth;
the desert the challenge that must be met, without which other challenges
cannot be met; the ocean the path to Cathay, that is, the path toward
obligations in the outer world—and the giant’s eventual dissolution in it—
all of which follow from the original conquest of a continent.