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Summary: America at the Turn of the Century
Review: Robert D. Kaplan presents an engaging view of the Americanwest and the closely related areas of British Columbia and Mexico. Hisjourneys take him to such disparate places as St. Louis, Vicksburg, Kansas City, Vancouver, Mexico City, Los Angeles and the Oklahoma panhandle. In some ways the book provides further insights into trends previously chronicled in "Edge Cities," "The Nine Nations of North America" and "Ecotopia." • Kaplan provides one of the most succinct descriptions of the demise of St. Louis --- a city that has lost 60 percent of its population, which he concludes "no longer exists." • He provides a sympathetic description of the Oklahoma panhandle, constituting what may be the most comprehensive coverage of this geographical corner virtually unknown to most of the nation. • The book spends considerable time in discussing Arizona, its major cities and its native American preserves. Kaplan finds that people in the emerging American communities, especially in the technology oriented edge cities, are likely to have much more in common with people they have only met through telecommunications than with their geographical neighbors, or people who live just a few miles away. In this regard, he correctly recognizes that the very meaning of community is undergoing a radical change. The only significant problem is an uncritical acceptance of the Portland's purported land use planning success. Kaplan indicates that Portland has avoided the "unlimited growth" that has plagued other US cities. He further indicates that the cities of the Northwest (Vancouver and presumably Portland and Seattle) are devoid of sprawl. In fact, Portland sprawls at lower densities than Los Angeles and the central city of Portland is barely one-half to one-third as dense as the Orange County suburbs of Anaheim, Buena Park and Santa Ana. This mistake is often made by people who visit Portland's tiny but engaging core, while missing the other 99 percent of the urbanized area, which resembles Phoenix, though with more vegetation and more sprawl (less density). With the noted exception the Kaplan book is important, useful and recommended as a thoughtful and apparently accurate assessment of US social trends as the 21st century approaches. Wendell Cox
The Public Purpose
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Summary: American Travel Writing from an Alternate Dimension
Review: While Kaplan keeps to his usual winning combination of travel writing and social science in "Empire Wilderness," he cannot avoid falling prey to the very same flaws that marred his last book, "Ends of the Earth"; namely, a tendency to over-emphasize pervailing social trends until he begins to sound like some kind of prophet of doom, forecasting a world out of control. When writing about the Third World, this is somewhat more forgiveable approach, but when applied to the United States, the reader begins to wonder how Kaplan can, in good conscience, hype and sensationalize some of the trends on which he chooses to focus. In his writings for the "Atlantic Monthly," Kaplan has admitted to a Hobbesian, conservative view of human nature, and this, at times, makes him sound like a rabid elitist frightened by the dark, deprived "mob" seething beneath the shining surface of America. This is a somewhat unfair characterization, however, as most of Kaplan's social observations demonstrate a stunning ability to forecast history and cut to the heart of the most salient political and economic trends facing our nation. The extra hype and generalization are probably just to sell more books, so we can let Kaplan off the hook on this one. Just be prepared to read this book skeptically, and you are in for one hell of a journey.
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Summary: Positive Reviewers are so Naive
Review: Just because one never experiences racism or does not practice it or because a few CEO's are "minorities" does not mean we can say "problem solved". Why do we still claim racism and race are a factor in the US? because if it wasnt, all minority groups would be equal or at least encroaching upon the same level of economic reality most whites experience; the question is will we be allowed to share it???? So in response to "negative reviewers are so hilarious" think about this...nothing will be solved until "minorities" are at the same socio-economic level as whites, in other words we want the majority of people of color to share the same economic status and cultural priveleges as light skinned people do within every aspect of US culture...can you handle that?
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Summary: Bitter pill to swallow. But the pill seems working.
Review: The poverty of American inland states described in this book shows that, contrary to many Asian people's belief, America is also one of victims of globalization. Benefactors of globalization tend to live in suburban pods. And the pod will be, according to Robert Kaplan, protected by private security guards. About those who are excluded, Kaplan's solution is simple: Forget the poor (though he borrowed other person's mouth). It's too cruel, isn't it? The issues of border dissolution between U.S. and Mexico and between Pacific North West and British Columbia are empathized very much in this book. These issues are closely related with immigration and decline of nation state. The phenomena of border dissolution is not peculiar to North American continent. For example, the border line between North Korea and China is also being dissolved because of N.K.'s famine. (As a South Korean man, I'm very much concerned about future N.K.'s absorption into either China or South Korea. No small, rich country wants to share border line with a big, strong but poor country. South Korean government is helping North Korea despite political grievances to prevent such an outcome, or so I guess.) Anyway, the strict control of immigration is not universal through human history. I guess it was strengthened because of Cold War.
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Summary: Positive Reviewers are so Naive
Review: Just because one never experiences racism or does not practice it or because a few CEO's are "minorities" does not mean we can say "problem solved". Why do we still claim racism and race are a factor in the US? because if it wasnt, all minority groups would be equal or at least encroaching upon the same level of economic reality most whites experience; the question is will we be allowed to share it???? So in response to "negative reviewers are so hilarious" think about this...nothing will be solved until "minorities" are at the same socio-economic level as whites, in other words we want the majority of people of color to share the same economic status and cultural priveleges as light skinned people do within every aspect of US culture...can you handle that?
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Summary: Negative reviewers are hilarious
Review: Kaplan writes what he sees and hears. He directly quotes the people he meets. Accusing him of racist and bigotry is like blaming the TV weatherman for an oncoming hurricane.
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Summary: Veiled Issues
Review: Kaplan's piece in the Atlantic Monthly "The Coming Anarchy" should give you a sense of what this book, An Enpire Wilderness, will offer. Like the romatic buffonery of Urban and Surburban critics like James Howard Kunstler, Kaplan has a subtle, veiled racism inherit in his travels. This is not new, it is typical of all the historical accounts of Anglo-Americans or European (i.e. light skinned) writers describing the "Third World"--- an offensive and dehumanizing label.
The future is bleak for U.S.-"minorities" indeed if we allow people like kaplan to speak for us. Not only do we suffer their avarice, genocide and lingering neo-colonialism all over the various nations we or our families derive from, now we must be the examples and first victims of the deterioration of Kaplan's euro-centric "Civilization". Kaplan's vision doesnt include "minorities" and it is time to protect ourselves when oil and other natural resources are depleted because like his own accounts abroad prove, who will suffer the most? In the U.S. it makes total sense that those who lack political and economical power, let alone competent and brave voices of dissent within our communities, will be the first to be subjected to the majority's so called "reforms". For me as a U.S. Latino, the future is grim but I dont need Kaplan to show me why. It is time to bypass this veiled racist and xenophobia promoted by impotent neo-liberal "progressives".
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Summary: America the Beautiful!
Review: Robert Kaplan is a writer for whom I have much admiration. I have followed his work for a while and I eagerly read his dispatches in “The Atlanticâ€. His writings about the third world- the Balkans, Asia and Africa -is stunningly good work. He brings a critical eye to these regions and reports little known or appreciated facts about these places. “An Empire Wilderness†is about Kaplan’s travels through North America’s faster-growing Western regions. Along the way Kaplan reports on what he sees as being the big cultural and economic forces at work in these places: immigration from Mexico and Asia, the collapse of America’s urban centers, the globalization of American business, the spread of the new type (post-urban) suburbs, etc. Along the way, Kaplan makes a number of startling statements and discoveries: Kaplan’s declaration about a bus trip that American buses were less safe than ones he had been on in the third world did startle me. The notion that America has some of the forces acting upon it the same way Kaplan saw those forces acting on the Third World societies he has visited probably terrifies most Americans and explains why Kaplan is on record as being frustrated at what he perceives to be an inaccurate assessment of “Empire Wilderness†by newspaper reviewers as a tract pessimistic about the future of the United States. Kaplan sees the future as bright . . . for most people. With the decline of the middle class, those who are in the upper-middle class bracket (with advanced degrees) are the ones who will prosper and succeed. Ethnicity will not entirely matter. Many- or maybe even most -East and South Asian immigrants will make far more money than do middle class or poor whites. And in any case, white racism is rapidly dying. (As Kaplan points out in Vancouver, white men *do* like Asian women.) The city is also dead. This is an observation of Kaplan’s that I can verify just by looking out my window. (I live in Pittsburgh: after seven at night this city’s downtown section is utterly deserted. Few people live here, and even fewer live here by choice. Middle-class and wealthier workers flee for the suburbs. Eventually the city’s taxes on business are going to drive businesses out to the suburbs.) Across the country, communities are springing up around the black hole that is the city. Thus, the spider-web of little autonomous communities outside of St. Louis that Kaplan saw is hardly unique. Everyone wants to preserve their independence from urban mismanagement. Nobody wants to commute anymore either, which is why the quasi-urban business districts in Orange County are so important as well. The growth of industrial parks will eviscerate cities. What is interesting is to see is how Kaplan grapples with where America is going. Kaplan is a classical realist who believes that ancient history is the clearest indication of where a society is going. Throughout his travels in the Near East Kaplan refers to ancient historians like Livy and Herodotus and to classical works of history like Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire†to chart the future path of the nation he is in. The problem with America is that our history is without a paradigm to fall back on. Kaplan refers to Gibbon a few times in the text, but mostly I get the sense that he ignores the past and believes that history, here in the Americas, is still being written. Kaplan envisions North America as a massive region of free trade, movement of peoples, immigration, wealth and prosperity with regional city-states that form the hub of American enterprise. To that end, Kaplan envisions America in the next century as being a loose Confederation than a closely controlling Federal government. The old rules don’t apply because America is a young country. Second and third generation immigrants from Asia and Latin America hardly consider themselves as citizens of China or Mexico as their parents might. They are Americans. One of the things that I love about Kaplan’s books is the wealth of little-known information that he gives the reader. I found the chapter on the tensions between the Hopi and Navajo in the Balkanization of Arizona to be fascinating. Kaplan’s keen eye picked it out, remembering tensions between the Serbians and Croatians in Yugoslavia and comparing them to the Hopi and Navajo. Is he correct? Maybe. Maybe the Hopi and Navajo have more in common than Kaplan thinks, but at the same time, maybe the people who look at the Hopi and the Navajo and see “Indians†without seeing the distinctions between their cultures are the ones who are wrong. In general I found Kaplan’s cultural observations rang true. America is getting more multi-cultural and our national identity is becoming internationalized. E.g.: My parents in suburban Philadelphia recently got an upscale grocery store that heavily features ethnic foods from France, Germany, Thailand, etc. That sort of thing didn’t exist a decade ago, or even five years ago, but it is the wave of the future because Americans are hardly nationalist in their culture. Americans want to embrace the outside world and make it a part of our own. Inter-marriage of the sort Kaplan observed in Vancouver between whites and Asians is progressively more and more a part of America’s cultural mosaic and will ultimately make us a stronger and more cohesive nation. America’s paranoia about immigration from Mexico in the 1990s and our post-9/11 fear of Middle Eastern immigrants is both silly and ultimately destructive to America. Immigrations built America into the colossus it is, and immigration will continue to maintain America as a powerhouse. Out of all of Kaplan’s books, I found this one to be the most different and the most interesting. Kaplan’s keen eye sees a new and different America. I highly recommend.
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Summary: Nuances of xenophobia
Review: Kaplan's writing is smoothly descriptive, mundane, but poignant. His thesis in this work is that America won't suffer Rome's fate. Technology, the flexible and vibrant social and political system, demographics, and merging geography will, instead, transform it. However, here's the catch: what will America become? The future is bleak and insecure for many, bright for an elite and qualified few. Will American democracy, as we know it, survive? Will the stronger, more centralized Washington-based government instituted upon the disposal of the Articles of the Confederation last? Despite Kaplan's intriguing and thought-provoking panorama of the changing American socio-economic and demographic landscape, there are somewhat strong --and at times lesser-- nuances of xenophobic, ethnocentric Anglo idealism manifested by Kaplan throughout the book. Many of the comments, if left out, would have given the book universal integrity.
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Summary: Kaplan in a new element- Blue, but Blue Highways it ain't!
Review: I have very much enjoyed Robert Kaplan's books on the Balkans and the Near East, so when I saw that he had written a book on travels in the United States I immediately sent off for it. Unfortunately this book ultimately proved disappointing. Kaplan is continuing his thesis that the collapse of the bi-polar world will lead to almost inevitable break-up and "Balkanization" everywhere & here he includes the U.S. with a vengeance. While the book contains a number of telling examples, Kaplan's travels are by no means random or exhaustive, and after a while one gets a sense that he is deliberately seeking out areas and peoples that fit with his thesis, rather than really giving us a portrait of America at the turn of the century. Unlike his books on the East, I did NOT get a sense that Kaplan was really "up" on the history of many of the places he visited, there was a lack of depth & a bit too much "Kaplan the tourist" to satisfy me. I also found his frequent editorial interjections annoying & distracting ("I didn't actually go there, then, I went somewhere else, but it seemed to work better for the story if I moved that piece around") Just DO it. Talking about why you did it raises the obvious question "would things have been diferent if you HAD followed your narrative sequence rather than the route you actually took?" BUT we don't get an answer to the question. In the end I don't really see any "answers" coming out of this book. If you are already a bit depressed about the State of the Union & want to be REALLY depressed, this might be the perfect book for you, otherwise, give it a miss.
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