In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There, they would quietly forge a series of agreements that divided up Asia. At the time, Roosevelt was bully-confident about America's future on the continent. But these secret pacts lit the fuse that would-decades later-result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, the communist revolution in China. One hundred years later, James Bradley retraces that epic voyage and discovers the remarkable truth about America's vast imperial past-and its world-shaking consequences. Full of fascinating characters and brilliantly told, THE IMPERIAL CRUISE will forever reshape the way we understand U.S. history
"FLYBOYS, the story of the U.S. air campaign against Japan during WWII, is told in exacting detail by James Bradley.... In this biography, Bradley describes the Japanese military mind and attitude toward foreigners and tells of their actions toward their own soldiers and the men they captured during the war. Bradley reads his work in a matter-of-fact tone, never emphasizing or downplaying the atrocities on either side of the war. The graphic, horrific details of Japanese torture, mutilation, murder, and cannibalism are recited calmly and succinctly by Bradley, as are the detailed results of America's bombing of Japan." (AudioFile Magazine )
About the Author
James Bradley is the author of the NYT bestsellers Flyboys and Flags of Our Fathers and the son of one of the men who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. He lives in New York.
I was born in Wisconsin surrounded by a loving family of ten and loved swimming in cold lakes. When I was a boy I read an article by former president Harry Truman recommending historical biographies for young readers. His reasoning was that it was easy to follow the storyline of someone's life, and they would absorb the history of the times on the journey. History soon became my favorite subject and I have been an active reader all my life.
When I was thirteen years old I read an article by James Michener in Reader's Digest which I paraphrase: "When you're twenty-two and graduate from college, people will ask you, 'What do you want to do?' It's a good question, but you should answer it when you're thirty-five." Michener went on to write that his experiences wandering the globe as a young man later inspired his works on Afghanistan, Spain, Japan and other places.
When I was nineteen years old, I lived and studied in Tokyo for one year. I later brought my Japanese friends home to Wisconsin. My father, John Bradley, had helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. My dad warmly welcomed my Japanese buddies.
I traveled around the world when I was twenty-one, from the U.S. to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, England and back to the United States.
At twenty-three I graduated with a degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
For the next twenty years I worked in the corporate communications industry in the United States, Japan, England and South Africa.
In my late thirties I took a year off to go around the world again. On this trip I made it to base camp on Mt. Everest and walked among lions in Africa.
My father died when I was forty years old. My search to find out why he didn't speak about Iwo Jima led me to write Flags of Our Fathers and establish the James Bradley Peace Foundation.
Flags of Our Fathers went on to be a bestseller and a movie, but few saw its potential at first. In fact, as this New York Times article documents, twenty-seven publishers turned the book down over a period of twenty-five months. This difficult and humbling birthing process inspired my live presentation Doing the Impossible.
In 2001 a WWII veteran of the Pacific revealed to me that the U.S. government had kept secret the beheading deaths of eight American airmen on the Japanese island of Chichi Jima, next door to Iwo Jima. After researching their deaths, I informed the eight families and the world of the unknown facts in my book second book Flyboys. (One flyboy got away. His name was George Herbert Walker Bush.)
After writing two books about WWII in the Pacific, I began to wonder about the origins of America's involvement in that war. The inferno that followed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor had consumed countless lives, and believing there's usually smoke before a fire, I set off to search Asia for the original irritants. The result of that search is my third book, The Imperial Cruise.
I am working on my fourth book, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and China.
Above my desk are the framed words of James Michener:
"Just because you wrote a few books, the world is not going to change. You will find that you will go to sleep and awaken as the same son-of-a-bitch you were the day before."
For the past ten years, the James Bradley Peace Foundation and Youth For Understanding have sent American students to live with families overseas. Perhaps in the future when we debate whether to fight it out or talk it out, one of these Americans might make a difference.
This review is from: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (Audio CD)
This is the history every American should know. The extent to which white racism was second nature to Americans in the 19th and early 20th century. The extent to which America engaged in Imperialistic warmongering. The cruelty perpetrated on foreign peoples. And the extent to which America promoted war among other nations and sowed the seeds for future conflicts. And of course, what a monster Teddy Roosevelt really was.
This book does a good job of letting the readers know about Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy. A nice companion book would be Gabriel Kolko's "The Triumph of Conservatism" as it gives a good picture of TR's domestic agenda. Here you see that TR was not the progressive that many think he was. Rather, all of the major legislation passed under Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson favored big business and big finance. In both foreign and domestic affairs America still has deep seated mindsets it needs to overcome and the first step towards accomplishing this task is to understand our history the way it really went down.
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This review is from: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (Audio CD)
Great book by the author of Fly Boys. Bradley did his homework. A great read or listen for those of us interested in the cause behind Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
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This review is from: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (Audio CD)
This book should be required reading for anybody who loves this country. Although it paints a decidedly one sided, and unflattering picture of Roosevelt, it's a side of the man and his ideals that people need to know: the the champion of the conservation movement, and progressive anti-trust reform was a racist, messianic warmonger. In telling this story, Bradley gives a very through history lesson on the attitudes that shaped this country's domestic and foreign policies. This is a history that each of us needs to know, unless we are to repeat the terrible errors of the past.
"The Imperial Cruise" is not a light read. The research is extremely thorough. Bradley posits a theory that is arguable, but he props it up against a mountain of evidence, which may seem at times redundant and overwhelming. But some of these facts are so contrary to our modern conceptions about our own history, that perhaps being heavy handed is necessary to drive home the point. In the face of all these facts, it's hard to completely dismiss his conclusions.
If you are looking for cloak and dagger, this is not the book for you. But if you have a thirst for history, you won't be able to put it down.
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