Here - Softcover

Depalma, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000639423X ISBN 13: 9780006394235

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2002

Synopsis

The European conquerors who created New France, New Spain,and New England, thus sowing the seeds of Canada, Mexico, and the United States,shared the old world they all came from. Yet starting at roughly the same timein broadly the same place the three countries that grew up on the North Americancontinent created their own very different versions of a new world. For half amillennium, these three universes existed side by side, sometimes warring witheach other, often times at peace, yet separated by boundaries and prejudices farstronger than any customs stations or border posts could ever be. Then, almostexactly 500 years after Columbus stumbled into the new world, the harsh realityof a rapidly changing economic order, combined with the ineluctable tug of ourown past, began to profoundly transform the relationship among the threeAmerican nations.

As a New York Times correspondent in Mexico and Canadaduring the last turbulent decade the first ever to report from both ends ofAmerica Anthony DePalma had a unique perspective from which to observe and todefine the momentous dawning of this uncertain new season in American history.In HERE: A Biography of the New American Continent he combinesvivid, incisive reporting on intracontinental politics from the start of theNorth American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 through the dramatic triple nationalelections in 2000, with illuminating re-examinations of key historical eventsand fascinating stories of individuals to create a completely original,passionately rendered portrait of the new world in the new millennium. How didour three nations ll nations of immigrants, sharing borders and intertwinedhistories develop such different world views and senses of ourselves? How dowe accurately and inaccurately interpret our shared history, and perceiveeach other? Who are we now, separately and as a continent, and where are wegoing? Why is it that most Americans still tend to view the United States as anisland, and rarely consider that what happens there, means anything Here?

DePalma considers these questions both as a journalist andthrough the lens of his own immigrant family’s experiences. "Thisbook," he says, "represents one American’s journey across NorthAmerica, one American’s pursuit of a northern passage connecting our past witha future taking shape before our eyes. It is the chronicle of the first years ofa new American continent, a biography of a place with special meaning for all400 million Americans who live in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Thisbook is also, in a sense, a biography of a single American the grandson ofimmigrants who sought out America, son of a longshoreman who carried a piece ofAmerica on his back, husband to an immigrant who also came to look for America,and father to children who know foreign anthems as well as their own and whosomeday will want to know which America is theirs."

About this title

Review:

As the former bureau chief for The New York Times in both Canada and Mexico, Anthony DePalma is uniquely qualified to report on North America. Here is his "biography of a continent," a look at how Canada, the U.S., and Mexico have diverged politically and culturally despite their shared roots and similar backgrounds. Having lived in all three countries, DePalma has a keen eye for national tendencies, such as the difference between how Americans and Canadians view the border: "[Americans] see the border as joining Canada to the United States. For Canadians, it is the last line separating us from them." Even history, it seems, is influenced by latitude. He writes of meeting "Canadians who did not love their own history and Mexicans who were afraid of theirs. It helped me realize just how we Americans use our history; we create it and control it and continually conform it to our liking."

A first-rate journalist, DePalma offers many memorable anecdotes in Here. In one particularly bizarre episode, he describes interviewing a nearly incoherent Carlos Salinas in a dark shack where he was staging a hunger strike to protest the way he and his family were being treated by political opponents. Just three months earlier, Salinas had stepped down as one of the most powerful presidents in Mexican history. Now, he "looked like a vagrant and sounded like a mystic," with bottled Evian his only sustenance. "To appreciate what it represented for the people of Mexico," he writes, "imagine Bill Clinton showing up in Harlem one day and vowing not to eat or drink anything but Perrier water until everyone in Washington stopped saying mean things about him and Hillary."

The triple elections of 2000 marked "a significant turning point in continental America," according to DePalma. "The notion that what happens across the border doesn't matter has been disproved." In this fascinating look at the state of the continent, he has done much to dispel misunderstanding and ignorance between neighbors. --Shawn Carkonen

About the Author:

Major Mark Adkin served in the British Army and is the author of several books on military history, including the first volume of The Sharpe Companion and The Waterloo Companion. He lives in Bedford, England.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 000639423X
• ISBN 13: 9780006394235
• Binding: Paperback