Pulitzer Prize Winner Series: Greg Grandin, Author of The End of the Myth

Greg Grandin, the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, will discuss his book The End of the Myth: From Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The conversation will be moderated by Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale Law School.

In The End of the Myth, Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history—from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016. For centuries, he shows, America’s constant expansion—fighting wars and opening markets—served as a “gate of escape,” helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country’s problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home.

It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism and the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built id he wins this year's election, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.

A light reception will open the presentation; book sale and signing by Elm Street Books will follow.

Registration required.

Historian Greg Grandin, who received his doctorate at Yale University under the direction of Emilia Viotti da Costa and Gilbert M. Joseph, previously taught at New York University for 19 years. He is the author of seven books, including The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation, which received the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Book Award for best book published on Latin America in any discipline; Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award; and The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, winner of the Bancroft and Beveridge awards in American history. He also wrote The Last Colonial Massacre, Empire’s Workshop and Kissinger’s Shadow.

Grandin is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. He has co-edited, with Gil Joseph, A Century of Revolution, and, with Deborah Levenson and Elizabeth Oglesby, The Guatemala Reader. Grandin has published in The Nation, where he is a member of the editorial board, the London Review of Books, the New Republic, NACLA’s Report on the Americas and The New York Times, among other publications. He is a regular guest on Democracy Now!

This is the second author visit in the Ferguson Library's Pulitzer Prize Winner Series.

Generously supported by Ann and Timothy Duffy.