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The Scramble for America
- Author
- Clement Knox
- Narrator
- Laurence Bouvard
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 23 April 2026
- Run Time
- 25 hours 29 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
'Shows how a scrappy band of 13 colonies fought and bought its way to superpower size' THE TIMES
For seven years after the Declaration of Independence the United States had no internationally recognized boundaries and no defined sovereign territory. It was more an idea than a country.
Then in 1783 the United States began to expand at a staggering rate, adding territory equivalent to the landmass of modern Bulgaria each year, every year, for eighty-four years. By 1867— less than a century after its founding—the United States laid claim to some 3.6 million square miles of land on the North American continent.
How did it happen? In The Scramble for America, historian Clement Knox uncovers the history of these epic years. It is the story of how the United States exploded out of its original confines on the Eastern seaboard, breaching the Appalachians, the Great Plains, the Rockies and extending its reach to the Rio Grande, the Florida Keys, and the Bering Strait, eventually straddling two oceans and commanding some of the most valuable lands on the planet.
In vivid prose he recounts how a cast of settlers, prospectors, and soldiers, hungry for land, motivated by visions of gold, and inspired by the rhetoric of national greatness, spread out across the North American continent, making history as they advanced and bringing violence and dispossession in their wake.
The principal currents of American history are all interwoven with these years of conquest: the origins of the revolution, the tragedy of the Native Americans, the spread of slavery, and the crisis of the union that culminated in the Civil War.
Those turbulent years of rampaging continental expansion in the nineteenth century teed up the United States for global supremacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The creation of the continental United States was one of the great events in modern history and continues to shape our world.
Published to mark the 250th anniversary of American Independence, this book offers a retelling of its national history like no other.
Critics Review
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'An author of wide curiosity — a previous work was a history of seduction — Knox brings prodigious learning to this aptly massive story of US expansion…The author lightens the journey with good anecdotes and a feel for people’s less exalted motives…Knox is notably good at the vital, contentious business of naming, mapping and agreeing frontiers for territory, as well as dividing it, once “settled”, into sellable plots. At a moment of angry nationalist revival, in the US and elsewhere, The Scramble for America brings a cloudy, much abused idea, the nation, down to earth'
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FINANCIAL TIMES
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'Good straight-up history, told with a breezily uncensorious air…Knox is particularly strong on the role of luck in the American story'
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THE TIMES
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'Clement Knox unravels the extraordinarily complex interplay between presidents and Congress, between ambitious local figures such as Jackson and dissenters who insisted that federal officials had ignored the Constitution in their zeal to acquire more territory, or had cheated Native Americans of their land….Knox’s striking account of territorial expansion raises questions about President Trump’s threats to seize Greenland, perhaps Cuba as well…Knox argues persuasively that…the right to take new land is hardwired into American culture'
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TLS
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'Clement Knox’s The Scramble for America tells the story of how, between 1783 and 1867, the US grew at a breathtaking 115 square miles every day (Imperial Russia’s expansion east was, by comparison, a mere 20 miles a day). This was extraordinary, as was the way in which the country was settled, rather than merely acquired, and managed to hold together'
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THE TABLET
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Details
- Author
- Clement Knox
- Narrator
- Laurence Bouvard
- Duration
- 25 hours 29 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 April 2026
- ISBN
- 9780008447298
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Colonialism and imperialism, Military history, Battles / military campaigns, National liberation and independence
Synopsis
'Shows how a scrappy band of 13 colonies fought and bought its way to superpower size' THE TIMES For seven years after the Declaration of Independence the United States had no internationally recognized boundaries and no defined sovereign territory. It was more an idea than a country. Then in 1783 the United States began to expand at a staggering rate, adding territory equivalent to the landmass of modern Bulgaria each year, every year, for eighty-four years. By 1867— less than a century after its founding—the United States laid claim to some 3.6 million square miles of land on the North American continent. How did it happen? In The Scramble for America, historian Clement Knox uncovers the history of these epic years. It is the story of how the United States exploded out of its original confines on the Eastern seaboard, breaching the Appalachians, the Great Plains, the Rockies and extending its reach to the Rio Grande, the Florida Keys, and the Bering Strait, eventually straddling two oceans and commanding some of the most valuable lands on the planet. In vivid prose he recounts how a cast of settlers, prospectors, and soldiers, hungry for land, motivated by visions of gold, and inspired by the rhetoric of national greatness, spread out across the North American continent, making history as they advanced and bringing violence and dispossession in their wake. The principal currents of American history are all interwoven with these years of conquest: the origins of the revolution, the tragedy of the Native Americans, the spread of slavery, and the crisis of the union that culminated in the Civil War. Those turbulent years of rampaging continental expansion in the nineteenth century teed up the United States for global supremacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The creation of the continental United States was one of the great events in modern history and continues to shape our world. Published to mark the 250th anniversary of American Independence, this book offers a retelling of its national history like no other.
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