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
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