![]() For a hundred-plus years, this has been a cornerstone of America’s national mythology. He opens with a plain fact: from the first settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, America was, until 1900, unique among nations in having an ever-advancing frontier line, and then, after 1900 and the closing of the frontier, having to reckon perennially with intractable Southwest borderland issues. Still, that he and the neighbor annually meet to share the labor of repairing that wall proves the neighbor’s claim: “good fences make good neighbors.” But do they? In this timely, strongly written, and important book, Greg Grandin surveys ideas of frontier and border spaces and fences spanning four centuries of American history. When it comes to border fences or walls, Americans are like the characters in Robert Frost’s 1913 poem “Mending Wall.” The speaker mocks his troglodyte neighbor for sustaining a fieldstone property-line wall that’s stood for generations but now serves no purpose. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” -Robert Frost ![]()
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