Expansion Books

Mr. Eland lays out persuasive arguments showing that the U.S. has been acting as an empire, particularity since 1950, rather than as the republic established in the U.S. Constitution. He presents separate chapters addressing the reasons that conservatives, liberals, and all citizens should be against empire. His point is that most foreign entanglements do us more harm than good, leaving him open to criticism for being isolationist, but the point is that even if foreign threats to the U.S. arise, it will be decades in the making, during which we stay abreast of events, rather than continually funding security for other countries while they use their savings for their own economic development.

http://www.mypatriotact.com/?page_id=7

Eland is Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute in California. Though his political philosophy differs significantly from mine, this book provides sound arguments against American imperialism that he manages to justify from both sides of American party politics. The general thrust of his writing is similar to Chalmers Johnson's (in fact, he references Johnson frequently), though the book focuses less on militarism and the loss of freedom and more on the general - and frighteningly, now commonly accepted - idea of an American Empire. A must-read for anyone looking for justification to forge a strong political movement for the dismantling of our empire.

eland does a unique thing with this book - he deconstructs the imperialism argument from every perspective. so it really feels like he's not preaching to the choir. by doing so, he strengthens his argument. no matter what your political philosophy is, this book finds a way to address you and dissuade you from supporting the american empire (it may or may not technically be one, depending on how you define it, but you know what he's talking about here). admittedly, eland is a bit more of an isolationist than i'd like, but hey, people with different political views coming to similar conclusions is a good thing! it's also a pretty easy read - you don't need to have coursework in international security or international political economy to get what he's saying.

As I said it for another book ("The New American Empire"), Ivan Eland's book "The Empire Has No Clothes" is also a great book to see through Bush's lies.

Now, George W. Bush says that he accepts responsibility for taking the U.S. to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence. -This is all wrong.

It was not the intelligence that was faulty; it was Bush's intentions to wage war against Iraq no matter what were the intelligence and the facts. He twisted the intelligence reports and invented lies around his already decided policy.

That's why he is guilty of having launched a war of aggression on lies and deception, and on having violated, in so doing, international law. He and his neocon advisors should pray that they will never be brought before an international court of justice.

The author has certainly convinced himself that in the 21st century the U.S. should think of itself as a plaintive island. I think that always in politics and governance the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Alas, this book - scholarly, heavily researched - is so stiffly one-sided that it almost impressed me as a meticulous work of mad fantasy. It is too lucid to count as manifesto but too bloodless and bland to register a real sense of thoughtfulness.

The dealer was great. The price I paid was good but the booklet is kind of thin for full price. The information seemed solid and extended my knowledge on this topic which I admit was and is very limited.

The text is adquate, but it's pretty hard to forgive sub-par illustration in an Osprey title. Christa Hook's work is relentlessly dreary. I was never enamored of Angus McBride's moody take on the Macedonian army in Osprey 148 (The Army of Alexander the Great), but aesthetically it's still superior to what is to be found here.

A book that details the infantry,as well as the entire history, and army of Alexander the Great.The pictures and explanation of the army,the sarissas,the terminology,not to mention the physical impact is very well written.
You can certainly visualize the battles and what the soldiers went through looking and reading at this book.

It seems as though most sources on the Alexandrian conquests focus on Alexander's enemies, Alexander's cavalry, or Alexander. The infantry rarely receive any attention, but as in any army, they formed the backbone of his fighting forces and he could not have waged his wars without them. This book focuses solely on them, detailing their origins, tactics, and even their personal lives. This book also helps to clear up the identity of the hypastists. Christa Hook's plates are also wonderful.

Besides the fact that as an active wargamer i was expecting to see something better on the issue of painted pictures which are not good, i also despise the fact that the author tries hard to impose his personal belief that Macedonian warriors were something different than the rest of the Greek warriors of that time era. While in Persia, Alexander or Eumenes later, might have used translators to give their orders to Persian or Scythian mercenaries, but all in all, the rest of the Greeks could well understand his words and orders since he had have Greek culture and education and was speaking Greek ofcourse.
I wonder how would the author feel if i would equally say that an American citizen from Kentucky could not understand a visitor from Oxford because they speak a different language?
I was expecting something better on the basis of objective information and not biased beliefes of modern times.

"The New Empire" is a classic of "revisionist" diplomatic history. Published in the early 1960s, the book contends that American elites were deeply shaken by the depression and labor upheavals of 1893-97, and emerged from the experience persuaded that the cure for domestic woes lay in overseas commercial expansion. LaFaber traces this theme through several diplomatic episodes, including the annexation of Hawaii, the Venezuela crisis of 1895, open-door diplomacy in China, and, in particular, the run up to the Spanish-American War of 1898.

His book is well-written and packed with information. Although scholarly, it feels like a "young man's" book, designed to shake people up and get them to think. Granted, LaFeber sometimes pushes his thesis harder than the evidence will bear. In the case of the Spanish-American War, for example, economics was clearly only one factor framing our Cuba policy; and with regard to Venezuela, it is unclear whether our policy had anything to do with overseas markets at all. But these are relatively minor complaints. The bottomline about "The New Empire" is that it's a mind-expanding book about expansionism. It should be read by any deluded American who thinks that our foreign policy is altruistic or that America rose to world power in a fit of absent-mindedness.

So why did I give it four stars? For a book that argues that foreign policy was driven by economics, there is little analysis of the American economy and no demonstration that it depended on overseas expansion in the late 19th century. LaFeber's account of the 1893-97 depression is reconstructed from contemporary speeches and newspaper articles, not from economic data -- and I would defy any reader to make sense of tariff policy, the gold standard, or the bimetalism debates on the basis of his text. This is a bizarre lapse in an otherwise excellent book.

This book, written almost forty years ago, offers an important, fact-filled overview of a very important era in American history, one that is largely forgotten today. The New Empire does a more than credible job of filling in the huge gaps in our collective history of 1865-1898, and it turns out that something indeed happened between Reconstruction and the Spanish-American War. First, LaFeber provides a worthy overview of American expansion in these years. Next, he describes the development of expansionist ideas by examining critical policy makers and pundits such as Fredrick Jackson Turner, Henry Adams, and Alfred Thayer Mahan. Finally, he delves into the history of events and policy decisions chronologically. While his information on the 1870s and 1880s is good, it mostly serves as a springboard for his assessment of expansion and commercial imperialism in the 1890s. The final decade of the nineteenth century is a crucial time in American history. Wracked with the Panic of 1893 and the terrible depression of the following years, America first stepped out on to the world stage, largely in an effort to protect the very viability of the nation from labor unrest and anarchy. LaFeber describes all of the international issues the U.S. addressed in this era: revolutions in Latin America (and America's steadfast enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine), the strong push by both businesses and/or government for foreign markets, the question of annexation of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Cuba., and the fluid relations between America and the European powers. The depression of the 1890s convinced many influential men that America could not survive economically without developing new commercial frontiers in which to unload its surplus agriculture and, in particular, manufactures. Antiannexationist voices were muted by the late 1890s; the only debate was one of annexation vs the establishment of protectorate status to the likes of Hawaii and the Philippines.

LaFeber contends that economic issues largely explain the development of America's new imperial policy. This is argued most forcefully in his investigation of the origins of the Spanish-American War. The most important economic issues at the time were the Cuban revolution, the dangers of losing access to Chinese markets due to the machinations of countries such as Germany and Russia, the establishment of defensively important outposts in the Far East, and the construction of an isthmian canal in Latin America. He does a wonderful job of describing the wavering opinions of policy makers and businessmen in the 1890s and of America's reorganization of political alliances with the European powers, Russia, and Japan. He makes a forceful argument for his economic explanation of the war with Spain in 1898. McKinley was not alone in trying to avoid war, but he and many other leaders came to realize that America could not compete economically without establishing foreign markets and that stability and guaranteed access to such markets would require annexation of strategic areas and the development of a strong navy with which to secure and maintain access to foreign ports.

This book is a wonderful source of information on American foreign policy from 1865 to 1898. It is rather easy to point to the Spanish-American War as the herald of America's transformation from isolationism to globalism, but LaFeber proves that the U.S. began to aggressively pursue a policy of commercial imperialism in the mid-1890s. This is not an all-inclusive history, however. It can be argued that LaFeber relies too intently on economics in his description of America's evolving foreign policy. This is true to some extent, but he does not dismiss other factors in choosing to concentrate on economics. All in all, I would recommend this book wholeheartedly. It is enlightening to penetrate the veil of these forgotten years to see how a progression of events in and outside America set the stage for America's ardent stride into the role of global and commercial superpower. Those who begin their stories of American commercial and diplomatic expansion with the Spanish-American War and the introduction of the Open Door Notes would do well to read The New Empire and follow the true beginnings of the national transformation back into the 1890s.

Walter La Faber author of this book is a reputed academic.Here he traces the growth and expansion of American empire.While doing so he questions traditional interpretation of American expansionism.Liberals view America inherited an overseas empire inadvertently,in a fit of absent-mindedness.This ,according to the author, is debatable.

It must be remembered that period between 1880-1900 America was continually subjected to economic turbulence.The country was assailed by frequent bouts of depression.What caused this?
Industrial revolution unleashed powerful economic forces.American market was inundated with goods which its population found it difficult to absorb.This led to slowdown in production and subsequent economic stagnation.

Factories went bankrupt causing massive unemployment which in turn led to widespread social discontent.Now continued prosperity of the country was at stake.This prompted American businesmen to seek overseas markets for their surplus goods.The situation was further aggravated by the fact 'Frontier' had already closed down as relentless expansion across continental United States took Anglo-Saxons to the Pacific sea board.Further writings of Fredrick Jackson Turner ,Brooke Adams,Alfred Thayer Mahan provided necessary rationale for leaders like Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Clevland,William McKinley to embark upon this course of action.Thus author has argued that economic self interest made American empire inevitable.

However I wish to add the above development could have been reversed.This brings me to highlight an important feature of Capitalism.Capitalist economy to survive requires mass consumption for which a common man needs sufficent purchasing power.This can effected only by empowering labour class.Elites who control means of production refuse to do this as this would bite into their profits.Hence goods produced could not be absorbed locally and so the need to find foreign markets.

We know from History quest for foreign markets is mostly done through violent means.This has been the rootcause for American aggression world wide.Washington forcefully broke open Japan's door and brought it to the outside world.War with Spain followed which led to the seizure of Cuba,Puerto Rico,Philippines.This ensured American control over Latin and Central Americas and strategic domination of Caribbean.Simultaenously expansion across the Pacific saw America establishing foothold in China much to the annoyance of other powers particularly Imperial Japan.US-Japanese rivalry to control Far Eastern markets consummated in Pearl Harbor.

V.I Lenin the founder of now defunct Soviet state highlighted this obnoxious aspect of capitalism in his seminal work'Imperialism-Highest Stage of Capitalism'.It seems author while writing this book has either ignored or forgotten to consult Lenin's work.Though La Faber has spoken against established opinion he can in no way be called a revisionist.Throughout the book author sounds mild,apologetic while interpreting American policies. I think a Marxist historian would have treated the subject differently.But then ,I feel, Marxian thought is a taboo in America.

While the American Revolution and the Civil War are both extremely important periods in the history of the United States, the tendency of many teachers to overemphasize these two eras leads to a peculiar gap in American knowledge, especially when concerning America's period of economic and landed expansion. As Walter LaFeber impresses upon us from the very preface of his book, these formative years are some of the most important in the history of the United States; the opinions and policies shaped through the crises of the late 19th century impacted not only the foreign relations of the time, but created the base from which America's current foreign policy grows and shows many of the reasons for our prominent place upon the global stage.

The basic premise of LaFeber's argument is that all roots of American expansion and imperialism in the 19th century are economically based. There are many observable reasons for this economic instability, but the most important argument is that as a result of expanded production and an agricultural and industrial surplus, American companies needed new markets in order to survive. Yet as American converted from intense agricultural cultivation to industrialization, it became increasingly obvious to policymakers and intellectuals alike that due to the hard competition in existing European industrial markets, expansion into unexplored world markets was now essential for America's economic survival. According to LaFeber, the importance of these new foreign markets, especially in Latin America and Asia, becomes the driving force in all foreign policy decisions, forcing Americans, in a sense of self-preservation, from her self-imposed seclusion into participating in global politics.

Because this book as a whole is extremely well written and fairly impartial, it is very jarring to note the few times that the author does descend into either idealization or vilification. For instance, when explaining the ultimate reasons for the Spanish-American War, it is interesting to notice however the extreme lengths to which this author does his best to vindicate President William McKinley from the popular opinion of spinelessness. In contrast to the carefully accurate (if to a small degree, pro-American) description of the most of the policymakers involved, many times President McKinley is described in glowing terms that seem out of odds from the rest of the book's candid views. Terms such as "superb" and "uncommon" are used quite frequently to describe both the President and his actions; at every turn LaFeber is trying too hard to convince us of McKinley's political mastery and his decidedly controlling role in the declaration of war upon the Spanish (instead of blaming the whole affair upon McKinley's spinelessness and the pressure of the public and the press), and this becomes bothersome after the first few pages.

As the author is a man in a field of men, it is also bit disappointing but perhaps not surprising that Walter LaFeber's book focuses entirely upon the influential men of the time period. Indeed, through the entire book, there are only four women mentioned: Mrs. Gresham, the wife of Walter Quintin Gresham II, Julia Ward Howe, an author named along with Mark Twain and James Russell Lowell, the Queen Regent of Spain, Mariá Cristina, and the Queen Liliuokalani, ruler of Hawaii from 1891-95. At most, these influential women, and especially the Queens, were given only a couple lines on a few pages--nothing compared to the incredible depth of analysis presented on the influential men of the day. Despite the admittedly small numbers of significant women in the state and federal governments during this time period, it would be encouraging for someone as respected as Walter LaFeber to realize the importance of women in history--as 50 percent of the population, these women have had a considerable impact upon the shaping of ages and deserve more than just a few sentences.

Moreover, throughout this 400 odd page book, the reader is overwhelmed by evidence and quotations--footnotes can and have taken up all but a paragraph of space on the top, and even the "selected" bibliography is 8 pages long. While showing the exhaustiveness of LaFeber's research and quite impressive in its scope, this obvious exploration into every little detail is definitely overwhelming in the text and for those of us not students of history, it is extremely overwhelming at times, necessitating many readings and in some places simply obscuring the point that the author is laboring to make. This is extremely sad, because LaFeber has something very important to say and it should not be ignored, especially by the general public, who, despite most New York Time's reviewers, are not all intellectuals and may have some difficulty with the oftentimes superfluous detail.

Despite these and a few other flaws this book as a whole is thoroughly researched, skillfully laid out and clearly written, roughly succeeding in its attempt to explain an exceedingly complex subject in such a way that all the interconnections between countries and their policies are comprehensible even to a novice. As America becomes ever more present in global politics, and as America's current foreign policy and especially our tendency to concern ourselves in other nation's business can in some part be traced to the world economic ties that were formulated during America's Age of Expansion, this book is important for all Americans to read as we struggle to understand both our country's actions and its proper place among the world powers.

The unstated thesis of Walter Lefeber's book is that an expansionist foreign policy was a conspiracy that "the great and the good" fostered on an unsuspecting American public. Apparently there was this rather unfortunate tendency that arose after the Civil War toward emprire building and that there was an almost "illuminati" type approach by the "wise men" of American foreign policy to see that an empire was obtained.

The problem with this line of thought is that it bears very little relation to the truth. Empire building was not quite the new thing that Lefeber makes it out to be, rather these sentiments should be viewed as a continuation of manfest destiny. Once the US took the continent from the French and Spanish, eyes turned elsewhere. This was not quite the 40 year process that Lefeber makes it out to be. It was much more complex than that.

The other problem is that Lefeber, with his conspiracy approach to foreign affairs, seems to miss that the people who were apparently working together to build this overseas empire, did not really like each other that much. Theodore Roosevelt did not much care for the Adams brothers Henry and Brooks (though they were distantly related) who in turn thought him insane.

I cannot quarrel with Lefeber's scholarship and would recommend reading this book but with the proviso that at times he appears to be viewing American foreign policy as one vast conspiracy which simply is not true.

In Seizing Destiny, he recounts the great multi-century sweep of American history. Kluger tells an epic story of people "ruthlessly transforming a spectacular wilderness into a mighty state." He adds that "no other sovereign entity ever grew so large so fast to become so rich and so strong.". The means, he hastens to point out, were a decidedly mixed bag of motives and techniques that embraced "daring, cunning, bullying, bluff and bluster, treachery, robbery, quick talk, double talk, noble principles, stubborn resolve, low-down expediency, cash on the barrelhead, and, when deemed necessary, spilled blood."

Success, in other words, came at a price, first and foremost for the native peoples who occupied the American land and the slaves brought over to work it, but also for the present-day descendants of the colonists, who have inherited a tainted legacy. The peopling of the American continent by European settlers, rather than a grand pageant, is presented as a series of land deals, parsed and analyzed in great detail. Boundary lines, maps and greed lie behind the lofty rhetoric of manifest destiny and divine providence, which, in so many cases, boiled down to the minutiae of meandering rivers, surveying errors, obscure historical claims and disputed fishing rights.

Kluger begins with Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century and French fur traders in the seventeenth century as precursors to the American Revolution against British rule a century later. The new nation aggressively expanded by purchasing Louisiana from the French in 1803, but it failed in a bid to conquer Canada during the War of 1812. In 1818-1819, the Monroe administration pressured the Spanish into surrendering Florida and persuaded the British to share the Pacific Northwest. Between 1820 and 1850, the United States pressed westward to the Pacific. American settlers migrated into Texas, where they revolted against Mexican rule, winning their independence in 1835-1836. Annexation by the United States in 1845 led to a one-sided war with Mexico a year later. Sweeping American victories secured the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which cost Mexico her northern two-fifths, including California on the Pacific. At the same time, the British and the Americans agreed to divide the Pacific Northwest along the forty-ninth parallel.

During the last third of the nineteenth century, the United States pushed into the Caribbean and the Pacific to project its power and seek markets in Latin America and Asia. In 1867, the Americans seized the Pacific Island of Midway and purchased the vast Alaskan Territory from Russia. During the 1890s, a military coup toppled the Hawaiian monarchy and added those islands to the United States. In a brief war in 1898 the United States crushed the Spanish, securing American protectorates in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The next century provided a few more tropical islands: the Danish (now U.S.) Virgin Islands in the Caribbean and Wake Island in the Pacific. Despite this dramatic and important story, Kluger's book often bogs down in long and repetitive accounts of the back-and-forth of diplomatic exchanges, recapitulating dead ends as well as actual consequences.

To break the tedium, Kluger recurrently jolts readers with flamboyant metaphors. He likens one small colony to "a flea spitting into a hurricane" and Americans to "a porridge of diverse peoples ... not free of lumpiness." Kluger likes his metaphors well mixed. Of the American Revolution, he observes that "here was a substantiation that theirs was a truly indissoluble union and no mere display of pyrotechnics sent skyward to scare away their overseas masters. " Of the French Revolution, he observes that "French grievances were vented in alternating waves of liberation and repression that swept the overwrought masses toward the cauldron of anarchy. France became an inflamed society with a large and easily dislodged chip on its shoulder."

Kluger casts the British as pompous exploiters of the poor American colonists. Kluger insists that the colonists blamed the British crown for the massive land speculation in frontier lands. In fact, leading colonists, including George Washington, were the speculators, and they bristled when the crown tried to regulate or restrict their aggressive intrusion into Indian lands. Kluger contradicts his colonial picture by later (and correctly) noting that the post-revolutionary land speculation "smacked of the same cronyism and inside dealing that marked the rampant abuse of public office in the colonial era." That similarity was hardly coincidental, given that the same sort of Americans speculated in land after, as well as before, the revolution. Similarly, Kluger repeats the hoary myth that a tyrannical king provoked the American Revolution: "the crown's demand for obedience and tribute money" was "a clear case -- no matter how dressed up -- of child abuse." But until 1776 the colonists hoped that the king would help them by intervening against the real culprit, which was Parliament, and its offensive taxation.

This triumphal march from sea to shining sea, traditionally a source of pride for Americans, gets a feeble two cheers from Mr. Kluger. The means, he hastens to point out, were a decidedly mixed bag of motives and techniques that embraced "daring, cunning, bullying, bluff and bluster, treachery, robbery, quick talk, double talk, noble principles, stubborn resolve, low-down expediency, cash on the barrelhead, and, when deemed necessary, spilled blood."

Success, in other words, came at a price, first and foremost for the native peoples who occupied the American land and the slaves brought over to work it, but also for the present-day descendants of the colonists, who have inherited a tainted legacy.

Kugler has produced an epic that explains not only the how but the also the why of America's geographical growth. Beginning with colonial times, Kugler describes how the thirteen colonies came to be and how the royal crown apportioned additional lands to them, and how even these apportionments were not without controversy and disputation. This was probably the roughest terrain to cover while reading, but if you make it through, you emerge upon a lush land of dramatic exposition of America's development from a country of 895,000 square miles, located on the Atlantic seaboard to one of over 3.5 million square miles covering territory in the Caribbean, near the arctic, and in the Pacific Occean. Kugler covers in dramatic detail all the various forces - economic, religious, political - that pushed our country's frontiers to its current boundaries. There are fascinating details, like Franklin's initial demand for all of Canada to settle the revolutionary treaty with Britain, fro example.

Kugler's skillful use of dramatic metaphor brings to life what in other hands could be a dry recitation of events. Key players abound, from the well-known like Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, to lesser lights like Robert Livingston, and especially many of the players from France, Britain and other countries. Each chapter on expansion is like a mini-drama with its own cast of characters, and its peculiar forces shaping their motives and actions. Read this book to take a quantum leap in your understanding of how and why this country came to be geographically how it is today.

The swift spread of the United States across the continent - and beyond - seems almost inevitable from today's perspective. In an incredibly short period, even if measured only from the conclusion of the War for Independence, that nation's borders reached from the Atlantic shores to the Pacific Ocean. Was this continent so empty or the resistance so minimal that only one end would result? Richard Kluger explains how land hunger, glory-seeking Presidents and various international events led to the formation of a great empire. If nothing else is clear from this intense study of expansion, the mantra of "Manifest Destiny" drummed into school children in that nation is clearly misplaced. The massive stretches of US borders were as much due to fortuitous circumstances as to any other cause. But the widespread popular desire to expand was clearly the foundation to encourage taking advantage of those circumstances.

Kluger notes that from the earliest European expansion into North America, land hunger was a strong social and political force. The charters granted aristocrats, "companies" of colonists and others were vague, conflicting and often unrealistically ambitious. When charter provisions declared the western border was "the Southern Sea" [the Pacific Ocean], it set a pattern. Western expansion was considered inevitable by royal decree. Displacing the monarchy only set the authority for western settlement a notch higher. Kluger is selective, if unsubtle, in weaving racist attitudes underlying US continental imperialism. He ignores the indigenous peoples, making almost as little note of them as does the US Constitution - "cited only once in passing". He clearly acknowledges, however, the hypocrisy of whites in making settlements with the Indians, then breaking those when convenient. Slavery was tolerated not only because the "slavocrats" from the South were politically dominant, but also because it was believed blacks "benefitted" from this unsavoury institution. Unlike the Indians, slaves were part of the economy. That role buttressed the political power of the South and national expansion was to be riven by a North versus South dichotomy of far more importance than whether westward expansion needed justification. Reaching the Western Ocean seemed a given. Only how the continent was to be segmented remained to be settled.

Structured around the acquisition of each segment of North America the US had interest in, the chapters explain how the territory was viewed and what transpired to gain it. It's not often pleasant reading as Kluger highlights how devious politicians could be over land. Land was the issue and all other considerations followed. The aim might have been agriculture, transportation or even diplomatic confrontation, but the goal was always territory. So pervasive was that desire, that we must give Kluger an extra touch of credit for not repeating that oft-quoted gibe from a frontier farmer that "I don't want all the land. Just what joins mine!" which succinctly sums a sub-theme of the book. The main theme is that whoever sat in the White House, irrespective of ideology or party affiliation, gaining land was a constant. If any President is given rougher treatment by Kluger than John Tyler best assumes the hairshirt the author drapes. After a careful and complete depiction of the development of Texas as a province of Mexico, including vivid accounts of that nation's domestic politics, Kluger follows the devious manoeuvring Tyler engaged in. Like a later President, provoking a war to gain an end was not beyond Tyler's range of choices.

For all the image of a "land hungry" people Kluger tries to paint for the US, his attention to domestic affairs is granted little ink. He addresses the slave-holding "plantocracy" in scathing terms throughout the pre-Confederacy years, and notes how depressions cut back on land investment. He cannot, of course, discuss the expanding frontier without noting the work of Frederike Jackson Turner. However, he accepts Turner's "land hunger" thesis without reference to the debate over who constituted the frontier population. Expanding the topics covered would have generated a second volume in this study. Other works have addressed them well, and might be considered in conjunction with this one. Given his intention, to show how land hunger was implemented through government action, domestic diplomatic and military, the coverage is greatly satisfying. Add Kluger's vivid style in presenting the wealth of information he conveys, this is a highly readable and useful volume. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Vintage)
It is hard to fathom the meaning of the reviewer who said of Richard Kruger that "his perspective is that of a disinterested party." Richard Kruger makes a very lucrative living as an intellectual, churning out long works of history on topics of his own choosing. He, more than the average American, is enjoying the lifestyle available to those who live in an affluent, successful society. If he is "disinterested" in how the United States reached the level that affords him his opulent existence, then he has learned very little from his research. Sadly, his real attitude is even worse. He finds distasteful how his country climbed to the top of world civilization, apparently unaware that his own life would be far less happy had things gone a different way. This makes him something of a fool.
One can read the same story, but from a different perspective, in Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation (Knopf, 2006). Kagan also recounts America's "aggressive expansionism, acquisitive materialism, and an overarching ideology of civilization that encouraged and justified both." But he embraces this success story. He sets out to debunk "the pervasive myth of America as isolationist and passive until provoked . . . . This book is an attempt to tell a different story that is more about expansion and ambition, idealistic as well as materialistic, than about isolationist exemplars and cities upon hills." This is a very useful exercise, and I would suggest that Kagan and Kruger be read together. Then the reader should look around the world with a clear eye and understand that the bare-knuckle methods used to build America are still needed to keep it on top. It's a much needed corrective to the notions (held by segments of both right and left) that decadent idealism and altruism form the path to glory.
The problems facing Americans today are not the results of our past victories, but of our present failures. John Ferling, another self-weakening liberal, in his Washington Post review claimed Kruger should have spent more time preaching disapprovingly about "the legacy of America's historic aggressiveness." We can only hope that the legacy holds in the face of rising powers such as China and Iran who exhibit the "lean and hungry" look that has challenged the world in the past. America won its challenges to those rival societies it encountered, and we should all consider ourselves members of a very "interested party" in making sure we continue to win when challenged now and in the future. Few people ever get to enjoy the benefits of living in the lead civilization of their day. Most of humankind always lives in conditions far worse. We should thank the hard work, cunning and ruthless ambition of our forefathers for "seizing destiny" and passing the good times on to us.

Don't be put off by the negative and tepid reviews; this is an exceptionally informative and entertaining book. I usually don't care for histories written by novelists (the great Shelby Foote excepted); however, this is a beautifully written account of our country's expansion. The author has the ability to encapsulate events and personalities concisely, deftly and elegantly.

Best of all, his perspective is that of a disinterested party - not the chauvinistic pap that we all had to endure in public school text books. This is not to say that he has written a preachy screed from the Howard Zinn school of victim-history. His assessments are witty and yet balanced. There are no cartoonish heros or villains here, just complex people working for their own ends.

Do yourself a favor and expand the "All editorial reviews". You will find therein not only very favorable comments from Joseph Ellis, David Kennedy, Dan Carter and others, but also a brief snippet from the book.

If you are a jingoistic "super-patriot" of the Lynne Cheney/William Bennett school, beware! This book may let too much light in.

Reynolds history resuscitates Jackson's reputation and places his presidency in the political, cultural, and religious context of the "Age of Jackson" (roughly 1820 to 1850). As with all histories that cover a specific time scope, the selection is somewhat artificial, but Reynolds' account does a good job of setting the stage for Jackson's entrance (the Revolutionary generation growing old, the country growing west, the culture growing up, and religion growing wild), and pointing the spotlight of the Age's impact on the decades of war over slavery just off stage.

Slavery and Manifest Destiny were the central issues of the Age of Jackson, as abolition began to make literary and political headway and the country continued to expand westward with an attitude of providential grant. This growth symbiotically fed on and into the religious ferment that was a key characteristic of this period. Reynolds does a good job of providing the broad outline, then focusing on a few key participants in the history so we can see both forest and trees.

Jackson is the broad-shouldered centerpiece of the Age, of course, with his country upbringing, cursory education, and coarse manners standing tall as the accepted portrait of the man, the President, and the Age. Reynolds, while acknowledging these givens, focuses on Jackson's political skills (surprisingly adept) and his attitude toward race (the native American removal policy, while horribly flawed, was based on paternalistic notions of fairness that reflected the mainstream of his time), while showing that this bluff and gruff duelist and frontiersman was actually capable of holding and expressing deep love for his wife and for God.

For more on Jackson, the most recent full-length biography is Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H. W. Brands, which I also rated four stars.

Regardless of your take on his political leadership, you will acknowledge Jackson as an honorable man after reading this book, and you will have a better understanding of the Age he characterized so well it bears his name. You will see, in the Waking Giant, the outlines of the literary, religious, and political America we live in today.

Purchased on the Amazon Marketplace. Easy to make he selection and the transaction. Book arrived in great shape. Price was good. The b okk was shipped right away. A great experience.

I am really enjoying the book. It covers the early 1800s in a manner that gives me much more insight to the developing nation than I had before. Interesting personal and cultural information brings the insights to light. Highly recommended to the history buff or anyone interested in how Americans came to be such unique people in this world.

Waking Giant is a new book by Dr. David S. Reynolds who teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The book deals with America in the Age of Andrew Jackson.
The book covers the years from 1815 to 1848. During this era the United States tripled in population and industrial might. The era began with the end of the War of 1812 ending with the Mexican War of 1846-1848.
The greatest president of the era was Andrew Jackson (1828-1836). He was the first president born in a log cabin to a poor family; Jackson was also the first president not born into the gentry of Virginia or Masachusetts. He is famous for his defeat of the Bank of the United States; standing down South Carolina in the nullification crisis of 1832 and defending Peggy Eaaton in the infamous petticoat affair. Jackson increased the power of the executive office through the frequent use of the veto and his personal charisma with the American people.
The other presidents in this era were mediocre to adequate. Martin Van Buren the eigth president suffered from an economic depression though he did a good job diplomatically. William Henry Harrison died a month into his term to be succeeded by John Tyler. Tyler was a slaveowner favoring the south. He is notable for siring 15 children! James K. Polk was an effective president during his one term in office. Polk led the nation to victory over Mexico adding more territority to the USA than any other president since Jefferson and the Louisiana Purcahse The era ended with the presidential election victory of Whig Zachary Taylor the slaveholding hero in the Mexican War. He soon died and was succeeded by mediocre Millard Fillmore. Franklin Pierce was a failure in the office as the nation's 14th chief executive.
Party politics was wild and wooly! Jackson helped found the modern Democratic Party while the Whigs grew weaker failing due to divisions over the slavery issue. The Republicans emerged in the 1850s as a party of abolition and free soil. Lincoln would be the first Republican elected as president.
The era saw great strides in transportation. The Erie Canal was completed as railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, improvements in mail delivery drew the young giant of a nation closer together.
Entertainment featured minstrel shows, stage plays and novel reading.
One of the most fascinating chapters in the book deals with religion in this era. We see revivals in the great awakening; the rise of the Mormons and New England transcendalism. Brief accounts are given of the Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and Roman Catholics. America was a nation where religion was an important spiritual element in the lives of most people.
This was an age of great native writing! Such authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, the Alcotts, Theodore Parker and Margaret Fuller who were transcendentalists. Other important authors include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Walt Whitman. America became a newspaper reading nation as literary rates increased in the ante-bellum era.
The greatest issue facing the republic was slavery. Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Beechers, Elijah Lovejoy and others exerted their moral authority on the minds of Americans. Great leaders of the cause in the Congress included John Quincy Adams, William Henry Seward and Daniel Webster. The secessionists were led by such states rights advocates as John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Henry Clay of Kentucky was a slaveholder who urged compromise.
The era ended with the slavery issue unresolved. It would only be solved by a Civil War killing over 600,000 young men.
Advances were made in the care of the mentally ill, the blind and the cause of women. Leaders in these causes included Dorthea Dix and Lucretia Mott. American Indians had to endure the hell of the Trail of Tears as they were persecuted by the dominant male white supremist culture.
Reynolds has a textbook style of reporting facts. The book serves as agood introduction to the time covered but is not in the same league as works on the era by Sean Willentz and Daniel Waler Howe. The book is well illustrated. The book could serve well as a college textbook. I enjoyed the book and will turn to it often when researching this fascinating time in our nation's history.

This is another in Tantor's well-produced books-on-CD. The book itself is an enjoyable and, at times, entertaining history of the "Era of Good Feelings" and Jacksonian America. The author, David Reynolds, is superb in describing the times and personalities of the pre-Civil War era.

I have read two of David Reynolds' books, this one and the biography of John Brown. In both cases, while the books were rich in cultural anecdotes--particularly, in Waking Giant, the sexual tensions between the dawning Victorian Age and the age of mass produced pulp pornography--politically they are astonishingly facile. Reynolds' argument in John Brown, for example, that Brown was a terrorist who happened to be on the right side is simply a rehash of the "ends justify the means" argument. Didn't Chris Matthews say the same thing about Barack Obama's buddy, William Ayers? Waking Giant is even worse--essentially a rehash of Arthur Schlesinger's argument that Andrew Jackson was a precursor to The New Deal and the joys of activist government. Reynolds basically buys Schlesigner's, Charles Sellers and Sean Wilentz's arguments at face value even the ones that have largely been discredited, such as Jackson's role in destroying the Bank of the U.S.--the nation's central money supply--and the resulting financial Depression. Perhaps worst of all is his excusing of Jackson's racial policies on the ground that most people in antebellum America thought that way. Perhaps so, but not everyone had Jackson's power to implement policy. The Whigs, a political party Reynolds unjustly demeans, were opposed to Indian removal. Jackson institutionalized white supremacy as a key to the Democratic Party, something which lasted until 1964. Finally, no book of this sort should be without footnotes. Not having them might appeal to the general public, but they do no favors to those who want to find the source of particular quotes or information. This book came out in September, so it is a bit much to accuse Reynolds of wishing to piggy back on the election of Barack Obama, as Jon Meacham so clearly intended in his new book on Jackson, but it is really easy to get the feeling that Reynolds was anticipating it. The best, most thoroughly documented account of this period will remain for the forseeable future Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought. All other's are just second rate.

I purchased this book for my 17 year old grandson. He was thrilled and had the bok read by New Year's Eve. This was my first experience with Amazon and it was excellent. Web site easy and book sent in a timely fashion

A highly entertaining academic work that attempts to bust out of the classroom. With using the authors lifeline as the 1945-2000 period choice, to his interview with a true-life unrepentant lifelong drug user, to even sprinkling his personal experiences with illicit treats, the author makes the myriad of information accessible to us all. Can't Find My Way Home covers the whole of drug usage and combines, or rather, mirrors the various regions and times of America with the variable popular culture of music, film, art and literature. What did Charlie Parker like to take with his Heroin? What was Andy Warhol and the Chelsea Girls drug of choice. How much did cocaine abuse affect the making of Scarface? These and all kinds of delicious tid-bits are woven throughout this powerful and entertaining tome!!PILATE: A Brutal Bible Tale

I wanted to be interested in this book, but it became pretty boring ater a while. There is an undercurrent of romanticism that pervades the authors purpose. He claims to be neutral, yet his descriptions and conversations with many of the people slant towards idol worship. Although the author claims to be in recovery, I did not get the sense of how drugs and alcohol can ruin peoples lives. I felt that his narrative was self serving, and glorifying the wonders of drugs and experimentation. There is a price to pay. What was good was hearing his father's take on the whole down side of watching his son grow up loaded. That was interesting. I'm getting weary of the proselytizing about how epochal the 1960's, 70's and 80's were. I didn't like his picture either.

If you have been there then you know the answer. The question is: Why did we travel there in the first place. Addictions are sneaky. Sometimes we write about them, other times we fight them. Addicted movie stars are just addicts. Hard drugs have no respect for who we are.

An excellent and very detailed history of drugs and its impact on our society. The book is thoroughly researched. It's entertaining and very readable. It's not only a review of the history of drugs in American society but also covers a number of individuals and the effect narcotics had on them. I found it fascinating and scary. Having lived through those turbulent times it brought back many memories.
Pictures and a summary of the cast of characters would have enhanced the book. All in all a good read.

David Roberts reminds me of Sarah Palin, both are wholly out of their depth but don't seem to realize it.

I wish that I had done more research before I bought this book, but I also wish that the author had done more research in writing it. That is the heart of my problem with this book, it is a superficial journalistic account of what happened, I had expected something more. The reviews lead me to expect more.

If (like one reviewer) you had never heard of this incident, this is not a bad book to read in its description of the events surrounding the tragedy. It is well-written and easy to read. Where it fails is in its claim to be about "Brigham Young and the great Mormon handcart tragedy" and in Publishers Weekly claim that this is a "solid and well-researched contribution to Mormon studies." That it is not. The book has a little more than a five-page bibliography; about the same as a solid grad student term-paper, but exceptionally weak for a book of scholarship (Bagley, whom the author seems to idolize has a 25-page bibliography in his Blood of the Prophets).

One thing that shocked me about a book written in 2008, is its reliance on several anti-Mormon polemics long discredited by objective historians (e.g., Jarman's "U.S.A. Uncle Sam's Abscess, or Hell upon Earth for U.S., Uncle Sam" not surprisingly a total rant). On the other hand, he leaves out some of the most important Mormon historians (e.g., Quinn and Shipps). In a time of exploding growth in Mormon history and Mormon studies and decades of Mormon journals (Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies, Dialogue, etc.) Roberts cites only four journal articles.

I think this is symptomatic of an expanding group of non-Mormon writers taking on long-discussed issues in Mormon history which apparently are new to them and therefore they think must be new to the world. The ignorance of these authors blinds them to the subtleties of their subjects, yet seems to give these dabblers a false confidence in their analysis (fools rush in...) Denton's book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Krakhauer's book on violence in Mormonism and now this book on the Handcart disaster are all poorly informed, superficial accounts of complex issues. That Roberts actually praises Krakhauer for his "hard-earned expertise in matters Mormon" reveals the depth of Robert's ignorance of things Mormon rather than Krakhauer's expertise.

There are now many historians who have spent their whole lives trying to understand these things. Roberts for the most part ignores these scholars or tries to tell us that they are wrong. Upon what does he base his criticism? A couple years as a dilettante and talks with a maverick scholar and Roberts knows it all.

Maybe I was expecting too much. I had listened to Bagley's presentation at Sunstone blaming Brigham Young and Mormon finances for the disaster. When I saw this book, I thought it would analyze and research to a fuller extent those issues and develop or critique Bagley's analysis. After all, the book is subtitled "Brigham Young and the...Handcart Tragedy." It turns out that this book adds nothing on Brigham Young and is wholly dependent for its conclusions on Bagley's unpublished manuscript. Maybe someday Bagley will give us a fuller treatment and support of his conclusions.

There were many books on this tragedy before Roberts wrote this one, now there's one more. Apart from the readily apparent bias in its perspective, the book is not a bad account of the tragedy itself. Roberts includes several interesting first-person accounts. In that, it is no worse than the several other books available on this topic (many of which also have original accounts). In terms of deeper research and the analysis of Brigham Young's involvement in, or responsibility for, the tragedy, Roberts promises much and wholly fails to deliver. He is way out of his depth and simply unqualified to make the judgments the analysis deserves. This accounts for his reliance on Bagley. Unfortunately, what we get is a warmed-over analysis of someone else's unpublished paper.

Robert's new book on the Mormon Handcart tragedy of 1856 is well written and very engrossing.

It is far superior to HANDCARTS TO ZION by Leroy and Ann Hafen (1981) or the more recent THE PRICE WE PAID by Andrew D. Olsen (2006).

The Handcart migration was, despite Brigham Young's press releases to the contrary, a disaster during its short, but messy, five year (1856-1860) history. The 1856 Willie and Martin companies lost somewhere between 200-240 people (by conservative estimates) to starvation and the bitter cold of an early Wyoming winter.

Roberts chronicles the sad story with a deft hand. He does not buy into the Mormon mythology that turns the hapless victims into grateful Saints who somehow got to know God better by freezing and starving.

Disregard R.B. Johnson's review. He continues the traditional rant that only Mormons can understand Mormons or Mormon history. Such statements as, "A couple years as a dilettante and talks with a maverick scholar [Bagley] and Roberts knows it all," demonstrate this tired refrain. He dumps not only on Roberts, but on other non-Mormon authors who, he tells us, write "poorly informed, superficial accounts of complex issues."

There is nothing complex about the deaths of the Willie and Martin pioneers. These foreign immigrants, on their way to Zion, were poorly provisioned, were required to push unwieldy and poorly constructed vehicles over extremely difficult terrain, and were told by high Church officials that, despite the lateness of the season, they would get through with no significant problems beyond a few chilled limbs. So much for misguided prophecy.

Devil's Gate by David Roberts proves to be a well written account of the Mormon Handcart expeditions. Although the handcart expeditions constituted only about 10% of new Mormons coming into Utah Territory during this period, the legends and mythology of the trials and suffering of the members of these handcart expeditions make them a near demi-gods to Mormon historians. The book explained very well the essence of these handcart expeditions and their history.

However the key elements of this book lies in the Willie and Martin Handcart expeditions, both handcart trains that left on their journey to Utah Territory late in the season and how they were caught in the on-coming winter storms. Over 200 Mormons died due to exposure, weakened by lack of food, clothing and burdened with physical and mental hardship. The author's intent was to proved that these deaths did not have to happened and could have been preventable. Once more, the deadly finger of blame lies toward the leadership of the LDS Church who created the handcart expedition plan for that year. Brigham Young, ultimately stand in the center of this since he was the leader of the Church, helped initiate and plan the handcart expeditions. Thus as the leader, the buck stops with him. The blames can equally be shared with lower level of Mormon command structures, the elders who shared Young's plans and encouraged by his mindset. They encouraged Willie and Martin handcart companies forward into the wilderness. The people who made up these companies were just new arrivals from England, knowing nothing of the terrain they were about to go over nor the weather they could be expecting. They relied solely on their American Mormon breathens and the leadership from Salt Lake City that took them this far. They were sorely let down by all of them.

Still, this is an amazing story of courage and valor that would make anyone proud. The book is very descriptive of their activities, relying greatly on journals and notes of the people involved. Despite of the hardship, despite of deaths, they never give up, and even after they were rescued, they never blamed a soul for their suffering. They were the true heroes of the story. I am sorry to say that I can't say much about the people who sent them on nor the leadership in Salt Lake City that urged that mindset.

Overall, a great history book that tell a story that needed to be told. Its scattered the mythology created by the modern day Mormons regarding the Willie and Martin handcart expeditions that highlights their rescue but not the reason why they needed rescuing. And its a great book for anyone interested in American western history as it shows that not all wagon trains were pulled by four-legged animals.

I am afraid, those of the LDS faith will probably have troubles with this book. While the book talked highly of Mormons of Willie and Martin handcart companies, it does not talk very highly for the Mormon leadership at any level. Brigham Young defenders will not doubt go up in arms by his portrayal in this book. Others may go up in arms because the author mentioned Will Bagley quite a few times. I think for a Mormon, Bagley and Sally Denton are the anti-Christ of their faith based history.

Still for the rest of us, this is an easy to read, highly interesting and quite educational book that should be an eye-opener for many.

Funny how these people from Boston and New York write a book and seem to think the subject is their huge discovery. (We've seen this type of attitude in all those Burns documentaries.) Roberts's key point is that Brigham Young was to blame for the handcart disaster. Why, he has been blamed for the disaster, and deservedly so, by many people for 150 years. Nothing new there. Roberts does add a few historical howlers of his own. For instance he states two or three times that in 1856 Fort Laramie was a private fur trading post when if fact it was a U. S Army post and had been since 1849, a fact known to every novice student of frontier history and may be revealing of Roberts's lack of depth in his subject matter. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading book and can recommend it.

I found Devil's Gate absolutely fascinating! I had never heard of the Handcart Migration, and to discover that the tragedy that befell the handcarters exceeded the suffering of the far-more-famous Donner Party was a revelation. The author does a great job of fleshing out the individuals whose story he tells, from the Mormon leaders down through the handcarters themselves, including children. I especially liked the end of the book, when the author visits the important sites of the migration, and even pulls a handcart himself - a modern replica, much better engineered and built than the originals, and still an almost indescribably difficult mode of travel. I thought his account was very well balanced between admiration and crticism, and between the basic facts of the historical story and the very moving human experience he relates. A real page-turner, and an absorbing story that very much deserves more widespread recognition. Highly recommended!

I was excited about starting this book when I bought it because I found its structure (explaining how much war has affected American history by using the stories of 9 individuals) to be unique but I just couldn't get into it and gave up after 330 pages. Their thesis just couldn't be held together by the different stories and it reads more like a history book about the individuals.

Good book for picking up useless knowledge not for stimulating the mind.

Starting with the 1st French efforts to trade in North America, the authors argue that our self-image as peace-loving people who only fight when left no alternative, is often at odds with the facts. Second recurring theme is how military victories can produce unforeseen problems. Among the founding fathers, even those best disposed to the Indians, who wanted treaty-settlements instead of wars, assumed that they would either assimilate or move west. The War with Mexico and Spanish-American War are examples of US aggression that few would dispute. A very intriguing chapter describes Washington DC's 1930 Greco-Roman monuments as efforts to condition isolationist Americans to possibility of World War.
Sound crazy? Think of the movies Shane, High Noon, and Sgt. York-- always the peace-loving hero is pushed into a [satisfying] explosion of righteous violence. See also Anderson's The War That Made America; short history of French & Indian War

A recurring theme noticed by the American expatriate community is the vast difference in how foreigners view America and how Americans view themselves, especially in regards to how America has dealt with other countries. In the realm of literature and history, there have been few works that have bridged this divide, and most of them dealt with narrow topics; such as US - Mexico relation, or US - Japan relations in the 20th century. This book is probably one of the few that offers a long-term historical analysis of America's foreign policy from colonial days to the end of the 20th century. Starting from the early 1500s and ending with the 20th century, the book examines America's territorial and economic expansion by tracing the lives and careers of several famous / infamous military leaders. Most are American, such as Colin Powell and George Washington. There are also some non-Americans, such as Champlain and General Santa Anna. But all lead careers that defined the destiny of America.

The book reads very quickly, and the authors are objective in their style. The authors have produced a great history book from the foundations of several biographies. Probably the best feature of this book is its critical examination of how war can and often does destroy both victor and vanquished. This point is illustrates several times in this book, using both England and the US as examples of victors in war who went on to pay dearly later on. I recommend reading this book.

Fred Anderson has written with grace and authority about the involvement of American colonials with their British sovereign in contesting and destroying the French colonial empire in the West during the Seven Years War. This work serves brilliantly in the first four chapters of this flawed work to explain the role of warfare in shaping the American foundation and creation. The authors get into trouble when they attempt to explain how the use of war has been a permanent theme in American history. We are a nation founded in revolutionary war, we are a nation founded as a Slave Republic, two of the more repugnant features of human politics and organization. From that perspective one might argue that we have been remarkably successful in avoiding becoming an imperial aggressor on an even more extensive scale. The authors fail to explain or even address why it is that the United States voluntarily disarmed in 1865 and in 1919 when we had military forces that could easily have conquered Canada and Mexico, annexed the Caribbean islands and much more. Why did we not? They do not ask the question.
As this book was written in the earlier stages of our latest adventure in Iraq, it is understandable why they are attempting to use war to explain a policy that our government has not successfully or convincingly explained to us. But this book does not do a better job. Too bad because the wars they have explained are no longer with us and the one that is will remain a mystery to you when you finish this deeply flawed but occasionally brilliant book.

As is well known, American leaders tend to justify wars by explaining them as operations in defense of liberty and democracy. This important book examines that notion through the impact of several historically key men on North America.

They include Samuel de Champlain, whose missionizing and choosing up sides in various Indian wars set the stage for "the most widespread and destructive warfare in North American history"; William Penn, whose sincere efforts to coexist peacefully with the Indians degenerated into the unapologetic expansionism of his heirs; George Washington, who foresaw so many of the dangers of military intervention abroad; the tempestuous and bullying Andrew Jackson, who owned slaves, relocated thousands of Indians west of the Mississippi, and set the stage for ongoing wars of conquest in the name of freedom and liberty (and who had the gall to argue that relocating the Indians was "not only liberal, but generous"); Ulysses Grant, reluctant participant in the land-grabbing war with Mexico, a man who clearly understood that such aggressive moves always bring punishing consequences; the grandstanding Douglas MacArthur, aging momma's boy and self-appointed missionary of Christianity and liberty, finally relieved of command by Truman for suggesting that the United States nuke China; and Colin Powell, whose highly distinguished military career ran parallel with a habit of doing what he was told while silencing his doubts--doubts that nearly always turned out to be realistically based. "I had been conditioned to believe in the wisdom of my superiors...."

The authors of this book tell a balanced tale without heavy-handed recourse to the lessons unlearned from history, but the lessons stand out anyway: the conquest of the Phillipines, for example, so many of whose citizens died in the American attempt to liberate them in a bloody, exhausting campaign that only ended when the occupation did. Concentration camps and torture inflicted by MacArthur's soldiers stained these attempts to mold a nation's fate from above, as did Roosevelt's propagandistic declaration that the insurrection was over (July 4, 1902) when in fact it would not end for many years.

A poignant event might well give food for thought: Woodrow Wilson's 1916 draft of a speech to Congress, which stated that "it shall not lie with American people to dictate to another people what their government shall be or what use they shall have or what persons they shall encourage or favor." Reviewing the speech, Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote: "Haiti, S. Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama" in the margin by way of comment (he might have added Cuba, Mexico, and the Phillipines), whereupon Wilson gave up on the speech, a decision that may well mark a significant difference between the politics of his time and our own.

I found this book interesting, obviously well-researched and containing much information I didn't know about the early explorers of my own state of residence. Mr. McCartney did an important work in presenting history and in paying tribute to his gutsy ancestor within the same accounting.

This expeditio