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 time in broadly the same place the three countries that grew up on the North American continent created their own very different versions of a new world. For half a millennium, these three universes existed side by side, sometimes warring with each other, often times at peace, yet separated by boundaries and prejudices far stronger than any customs stations or border posts could ever be. Then, almost exactly 500 years after Columbus stumbled into the new world, the harsh reality of a rapidly changing economic order, combined with the ineluctable tug of our own past, began to profoundly transform the relationship among the three American nations.

As a New York Times correspondent in Mexico and Canada during the last turbulent decade—the first ever to report from both ends of America—Anthony DePalma had a unique perspective from which to observe and to define the momentous dawning of this uncertain new season in American history. In HERE: A Biography of the New American Continent he combines vivid, incisive reporting on intracontinental politics from the start of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 through the dramatic triple national elections in 2000, with illuminating re-examinations of key historical events and fascinating stories of individuals to create a completely original, passionately rendered portrait of the new world in the new millennium. How did our three nations—ll nations of immigrants, sharing borders and intertwined histories—develop such different world views and senses of ourselves? How do we—accurately and inaccurately—interpret our shared history, and perceive each other? Who are we now, separately and as a continent, and where are we going? Why is it that most Americans still tend to view the United States as an island, and rarely consider that what happens there, means anything Here?

DePalma considers these questions both as a journalist and through the lens of his own immigrant family’s experiences. "This book," he says, "represents one American’s journey across North America, one American’s pursuit of a northern passage connecting our past with a future taking shape before our eyes. It is the chronicle of the first years of a new American continent, a biography of a place with special meaning for all 400 million Americans who live in Canada, Mexico and the United States. This book is also, in a sense, a biography of a single American—the grandson of immigrants who sought out America, son of a longshoreman who carried a piece of America 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 who someday will want to know which America is theirs."