Habits of Empire

Starred review from June 9, 2008
In this compelling, controversial history, Nugent, an author (Into the West) and retired history professor, contends that the U.S. "has created three empires during its history," beginning with the march West, then the "offshore" acquisition of Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean territories, and the present era of "global/virtual" empiricism. Nugent's thorough chronicle peels back Thomas Jefferson's idea of an "empire for liberty" (which "rings just as true and right to Americans today") to find that high ideals do little to curb the aggression, deceit, cruelty and hypocrisy that have long characterized empire-buidling. Nugent spends most of his time examining America's achievement of Manifest Destiny, swallowing up Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Oregon, California, New Mexico and all points in between. Corrections, like the "imperfect pullback" of FDR's good neighbor policy, lead to the Cold War and, ultimately, to today's American empire, an expansion of power rather than territory. Covering a lot of ground in a short space, Nugent handles the relationships among governments and government players with clear, straightforward prose and easy-to-follow analogies: "American procurement of the Hawaiian Islands may be thought of as filibuster in very slow motion." Challenging some of America's most cherished ideas about itself, Nugent exposes an unsettling reality that outsiders-i.e., victims of American expansion-see all too well.

Starred review from June 23, 2008
In this compelling, controversial history, Nugent, an author (Into the West) and retired history professor, contends that the U.S. "has created three empires during its history," beginning with the march West, then the "offshore" acquisition of Alaska, Hawaii and the Caribbean territories, and the present era of "global/virtual" empiricism. Nugent's thorough chronicle peels back Thomas Jefferson's idea of an "empire for liberty" (which "rings just as true and right to Americans today") to find that high ideals do little to curb the aggression, deceit, cruelty and hypocrisy that have long characterized empire-buidling. Nugent spends most of his time examining America's achievement of Manifest Destiny, swallowing up Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Oregon, California, New Mexico and all points in between. Corrections, like the "imperfect pullback" of FDR's good neighbor policy, lead to the Cold War and, ultimately, to today's American empire, an expansion of power rather than territory. Covering a lot of ground in a short space, Nugent handles the relationships among governments and government players with clear, straightforward prose and easy-to-follow analogies: "American procurement of the Hawaiian Islands may be thought of as filibuster in very slow motion." Challenging some of America's most cherished ideas about itself, Nugent exposes an unsettling reality that outsiders-i.e., victims of American expansion-see all too well.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2008
Addressing the U.S.territorial expansion, historian Nugent, afluid narrator, explores the dynamicsthat drove it and the diplomatic treaties that ratified it. Beginning with the countrysoriginally negotiated boundaries in 1783 (detailed in Thomas Flemings Perils of Peace, 2007), Nugent recounts the circumstances of their extension to continental and then oceanic dimensions, concluding with the purchase from Denmark of the Virgin Islands in 1917. Good maps aid readers in following, for example, Spains expulsion from the Gulf Coast, while thetext develops quandaries that Spanish colonial officials faced in coping with the numbers of Americans marching their way. Expansion was an unpalatable justification for naked aggression even then, soAmerican leaders like Jefferson and Madison formulated the ideology of creating an empire for liberty. Nevertheless, presidential power wielded furtively or openly to acquire land draws Nugents critical commentary, seeing in its nineteenth-century exercisethe roots of contemporary Americasso-called empire. Erudite yet accessible, Nugents history lightly expresses its opinions without interrupting the arc of its story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)