Should we go to this and get an autographed copy?  or just order from Amazon?

Paulette

Gregg Kimball wrote:

> Dear VA-Histers,
>
> I would like to invite you to the next in the Library of Virginia's noon
> book talks.  On Wednesday, May 14, 2003, Jon Kukla will speak on his new
> book, A Wilderness so Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of
> America, published by Alfred A. Knopf.  Adherents to this email group
> will know Jon through his insightful posts to the list on a variety of
> subjects.  Long-time Library of Virginia staffers remember his
> successful stint as head of the Library's publications program.  He also
> has served as the director of the Historic New Orleans Collection and is
> currently director of the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation.  The book
> will be available in the Library Shop and a book-signing in the lobby
> will follow the lecture.
>
> Early reviews of A Wilderness so Immense highlight its graceful style
> and broad sweep.  Publishers Weekly summed it up thusly: "This is now
> the book to read of the growing crop of works on the Louisiana Purchase
> in this bicentennial year. . . . Kukla offers up a splendid, beautifully
> written narrative focused tightly on the complex historic origins of the
> Purchase and on the diplomacy that pulled it off. . . . Rarely does a
> work of history combine grace of writing with such broad authority."
>
> In a saga that stretches from Paris and Madrid to Haiti, Virginia, New
> York, and New Orleans, Dr. Kukla shows how rivalries over the
> Mississippi River and its vast watershed brought France, Spain, Great
> Britain, and the United States to the brink of war and shaped the
> destiny of the new American Republic. We encounter American
> leaders--Jefferson and Jay, Monroe and Pickering among them--clashing
> over the opening of the West and its implications for sectional balance
> of power. We see these disagreements nearly derailing the Constitutional
> Convention of 1787 and spawning a series of separatist conspiracies long
> before the dispute over slavery in the territory set the stage for the
> Missouri Compromise and the Civil War.  Interweaving the stories of
> ordinary settlers and imperial decision-makers, Kukla depicts a world of
> revolutionary intrigue that transformed a small and precarious union
> into a world power--all without bloodshed and for about four cents an
> acre.
>
> Gregg D. Kimball
> Director of Publications
>   and Educational Services
> Library of Virginia
> 804/692-3722
> [log in to unmask]
> Support the Library of Virginia
>
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--
Paulette Schwarting
Associate Director for Library Services
Virginia Historical Society
P.O. Box 7311
Richmond, Virginia 23221-0311
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(804)342-9688

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