How to Hide an Empire

Published Feb. 19, 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-17214-5

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories―the islands, atolls, and archipelagos―this country has governed and inhabited?

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

In the years after World …

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories―the islands, atolls, and archipelagos―this country has governed and inhabited?

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

10 editions

Ben Waber reviewed How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

An Incredible Examination of America's Empire through the Centuries

5 stars

If you want an extremely engaging, well-researched introduction to the roots and ongoing dynamics of the United States' empire - territories that have inhabited a legal and social grey area from the perspective of the mainland US - this book is a one stop shop. Immerwahr lays out the surprising motivation for many of the US's territorial acquisitions (seriously, there's a whole chapter that centers on the importance of guano for agriculture), as well as the not so surprising (Teddy Roosevelt's desire to cosplay Daniel Boone). Beyond that, Immerwahr exposes the hypocrisy that has continually followed the United States from its inception - its claim of representative democracy and equality for all while excluding peoples and places from that ethos.

Mixed in are anecdotes and sections around these topics that are fascinating, even if they don't further the main aim of the book (did you know Herbert Hoover fished …

If you want an extremely engaging, well-researched introduction to the roots and ongoing dynamics of the United States' empire - territories that have inhabited a legal and social grey area from the perspective of the mainland US - this book is a one stop shop. Immerwahr lays out the surprising motivation for many of the US's territorial acquisitions (seriously, there's a whole chapter that centers on the importance of guano for agriculture), as well as the not so surprising (Teddy Roosevelt's desire to cosplay Daniel Boone). Beyond that, Immerwahr exposes the hypocrisy that has continually followed the United States from its inception - its claim of representative democracy and equality for all while excluding peoples and places from that ethos.

Mixed in are anecdotes and sections around these topics that are fascinating, even if they don't further the main aim of the book (did you know Herbert Hoover fished while wearing a suit and tie?). Also the section on the discovery of ammonia synthesis by Franz Haber and his subsequent scientific efforts/personal life literally moved me to tears. Highly recommend.

Ben Waber

rated it

January 4

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