The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin

Ever since this nation's inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States' belief in itself as an exceptional nation--democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America has a new symbol: the border wall.

In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian 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, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.


This is a fascinating but deeply troubling book about America, and the myth it created about itself. Though built on the two tiers of genocide and slavery, it posited an American exceptionalism and a right to the land that stretched out before it.

Was this done on purpose? It seems so.

Thomas Jefferson 1809 - ”…the solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the secret fire of freedom.”

James Madison 1824 - ”There is no object which as a people we can desire which we do not possess or which is not within our reach.”

Andrew Jackson 1830 - He would sign into law the Indian Removal Act, forcing the Seminoles, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw off their land.

James Polk - 1836 - ”Do you not, an Anglo-Saxon, slave-holding exterminator of Indians, from the bottom of your soul, hate the Mexican-American Indian, emancipator of slaves, and abolisher of slavery? Have you not Indians enough to expel from the land of their fathers’ sepulchres, and to exterminate?”

Theodore Roosevelt 1889 - ”The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side: this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.”

Eventually the frontier would disappear, but there were still other countries to take its place. After the Civil War, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua would unify North and South as both sides turned their aggressions, and their guns, outward.

With the creation of the US Border Patrol in 1924, an “institutionalizing and virulent form of nativism and concentrating its animus on Mexican migrants,” those guns would turn inward.

The New Deal would hold back the tide for a time, but, over time, future administrations, Republican and Democratic, would undermine its protections of small farms, union workers and the poor.

The myth is at its end. The frontier, along with the good that it was suppose to bring, instead of peace we have endless wars. Instead of a resident, progressing citizenry, we are left with a country filled with people who reject reason and dread change.




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