Mikaberidze, professor of history at Louisiana State University, writes that Spain claimed North America in the centuries after Columbus but gave it a low priority. In 1682, La Salle sailed from Canada down the Mississippi and claimed all of North America for France. France’s priorities, however, remained local, leaving its colonies under-resourced and politically marginalized. In 1763, after the disastrous Seven Years’ War, Britain acquired America east of the Mississippi, while France, in a futile effort to persuade Spain to enter the war, had ceded her the west. By 1799, Spanish America faced pressures from American expansion and Napoleon, who, determined to match Britain’s empire, wanted Louisiana back. A reluctant Spain returned it in 1803. By then, Napoleon had changed his mind. War with Britain was about to resume. Colonies seemed a waste of money, and, in any case, Britain’s huge navy made them indefensible. Only months after the handover, Napoleon offered it to America. Mikaberidze continues his narrative into familiar territory in the final 200 pages. The cost (over $25 million with fees and extras) was a burden to a nation whose 1803 federal budget was less than five million, and there was a surprising amount of opposition. White Francophile Louisianans adapted, but the Purchase heralded catastrophe for Indigenous tribes and Black people. Slavery was somewhat less nasty in Spanish America, and freed enslaved people enjoyed modest rights; American hegemony ended that. Few deny that the Purchase was our greatest bargain and the strategy behind America’s explosive expansion. And, writes Mikaberidze, “The Louisiana Purchase has taken on renewed relevance as discussions of US territorial expansion resurface in modern politics. President Donald J. Trump’s remarks about acquiring Greenland have reignited debates over how America asserts its influence and navigates international diplomacy.…They reveal how the idea of territorial expansion has remained a persistent element in American political imagination, reflecting a belief in its strategic and economic value.”