Before Manifest Destiny

How the contours of the United States took shape—and what they might have been There was nothing predestined about the now-familiar shape of the United States of America. Early visions of what the new country’s borders could encompass included Canadian provinces, Caribbean islands, and even Kamchatka in eastern Russia. In Before Manifest Destiny , Nicholas DiPucchio tells the surprising, dramatically contingent story of the United States’ expansion, focusing in particular on the ultimately unrea