An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future

Knopf Doubleday Publishing G., 1999. Paperback. Good. Full of surprises and unusual revelations . . . an informed and disturbing portrait of the new American badlands."-Chicago Tribune "[Kaplan is] tireless, curious, and smart. . . . I cannot imagine anyone wi ll concoct a more convincing scenario for the American future." -Thurston C larke, The New York Times With the same prescience and eye for telling detail that distinguished his bestselling Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan now explores his native country, t he United States of America. His starting point: the conviction that Americ a is a country not in decline but in transition, slowly but inexorably shed ding its identity as a monolithic nation-state and assuming a radically new one. Everywhere Kaplan travels-from St. Louis, Missouri, to Portland, Oregon, fr om the forty-ninth parallel to the banks of the Rio Grande-he finds an Amer ica ever more fragmented along lines of race, class, education, and geograp hy. An America whose wealthy communities become wealthier and more fortress -like as they become more closely linked to the world's business capitals t han to the desolate ghettoes next door. An America where the political boun daries between the states-and between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico-are be coming increasingly blurred, betokening a vast open zone for trade, commerc e, and cultural interaction, the nexus of tomorrow's transnational world. N ever nostalgic or falsely optimistic, bracingly unafraid of change and its consequences, Kaplan paints a startling portrait of post-Cold War America-a great nation entering the final, most uncertain phase of its history. Here is travel writing with the force of prophecy. "Lively .