Manifest Destiny

Even though it was considerably shorter, Manifest Destiny wasn't as quick a read as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress because it was full of historical detail. But I had more fun reading this than my U.S. history textbook in high school, so that's a plus. Stephanson did a good job condensing American history into 130 pages. There were the characters we knew like Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson and then the men I've never heard of before, like O'Sullivan who coined the phrase "manifest destiny." I never thought of manifest destiny going beyond the wild West in the 1840s, so it was interesting how Stephanson covered all the way through the Cold War.

Every American schoolchild knows that the colonies were formed by those fleeing religious persecution. After the American Revolution, the idea of church separate from state seemed to push religion out of my mind when thinking of politics. I never thought of America as a Protestant nation until reading this book where Stephanson gives numerous examples of politicians and presidents using religion to influence politics.

Also I thought it was interesting how during the Cold War we turned to "containment," the opposite of expansionism. If American couldn't expand, then they weren't going to let the USSR either. This idea of containment emerged out of the belief that the Soviet Union needed to expand to survive (123). But this was not the case, because expanding only increased tensions in the multi-ethnic empire. America assumed that it's rival superpower was similar to itself in that a growing empire has more confidence and feels righteous. However, there could not be two chosen lands so America had to point to the Soviets and say "You're wrong, we're right."