Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

~ Walter Nugent (Author)
Key Phrases: offshore empire, charter claims, maritime issues, United States, New Orleans, West Florida (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* As military history attests, the logistics and support side of war is no small matter, and now it’s mega-big business. Halliburton, the Texas-rooted corporation headquartered in Dubai and formerly managed by Dick Cheney, has spearheaded the rise of the private contractor in U.S. military affairs and brazenly conflated privatization with profiteering. Investigative journalist Chatterjee, winner of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award, charts the full extent of the company’s corruption and transgressions in an impeccably matter-of-fact yet staggering work of military-industrial true crime. Chatterjee begins with the company’s revealing history and tracks key players Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as they alternate between CEO positions and seats of power in the federal government. Chatterjee then presents a meticulously documented litany of Halliburton scams and crimes. He cites epic waste and lack of accountability and the suspicious failure to repair Iraq’s oilfields. He chronicles the tyrannical treatment of the army of migrant workers from Southeast Asia who outnumber the U.S. soldiers they serve in bases resembling upscale American towns. Hope resides in Chatterjee’s portraits of the courageous whistleblowers who have exposed the company’s heinous opportunism and brutal disregard of human rights. Time will tell if justice will follow. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (June 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400042925
• ISBN-13: 978-1400042920
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #300,147 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When the Facts become legend still go with the facts., August 12, 2008

By	Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In some ways this is a surprisingly iconoclastic but not an entirely polemic free rendition of American history: a virtual potpourri of vignettes and excursions down interesting side trails not usually covered in such great detail in similar sources. Many events are of first hand narrations of how familiar themes of purposeful U.S. trickery and diplomatic duplicity, out right lies, many un-kept promises, broken treaties, and genocide were used to "win the West."

However to the author's credit, with only a few exceptions (including the book's overall tone), his version of the U.S. story is told with the dispassion of a disinterested historian, not by "playing to" the patriotic heart strings of a "legend seeking public" (as say Lynne Chaney did in her "A Time for Freedom"). But nevertheless this rather skilful and detailed elaboration of American history comes at a distinct cost: other more interesting (and arguably more important) historical vignettes had to be excluded. In short, Nugent's side road excursions sucked up a lot of historical time and space. Either the book should have been longer, or the topics should have been more carefully prioritized. The most contentious (and in this reader's view also the least interesting), was the author's resurrection of a rather obscure Canadian historian's theory that U.S. military bases near the Canadian border are in fact a kind of pre-positioning for a future invasion of that nation. And speaking of delving into the obscure, I would have been pleased if he had explored more about the connection between slavery and U.S. expansionist designs.

Little is new about how American history can be divided into three continuous waves of imperialist expansion that began with the Treaty of Paris, continuing through the Louisiana Purchase, Manifest Destiny, the ejection of Mexicans from the Southwest, all the way up the time-scale until the continent was completely secured from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. That theme has been "milked" repeatedly. However, what is new here is Nugent's view that the process of U.S. imperialist expansion continues in straight line into the present and obviously by logical extension would also include GW Bush Jr. administration's folly into Iraq.

While on its face, this is not an entirely implausible line of argument, especially if one is allowed to give undue weight to U.S. acquisitions such as Guam, the Philippines, and Samoa, as Nugent does. [What kind of "dumbed-down" imperialism does such acquisitions represent, any way?]

This, even more so than the expected future invasion of Canada, is altogether a tantalizing but implausible stretch, even to a clear eyed anti-Bush ex-Republican like myself. The author simply does not connect the dots between the last "wave of Western expansionism" to the present era in a convincing way. And here he had lots of material from which to draw: Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam, etc. Yet, since none of these leaves much of a hegemonic footprint, let along rich acquisitions of land, his analysis does not ring true and leaves even me cold and asking questions about the sweeping character of the author's overarching but disconnected thesis?

Even so, it would not be unfair to say that Nugent's version of American history, which is so well documented especially in the first two phases, is definitely not Robert's Whul's version of "when the facts become legend, then go with the legend." In fact, it is more on the order of a suitable fix for that famous edict: "When the facts become legend, still go with the facts."

For sticking to the facts at least through the first two waves of expansionism, and not enlarging or embellishing on popular themes and legends (like groveling over the "last stand at the Alamo"), the book deserves serious consideration and five stars. But for failing to acknowledge that contemporary U.S. imperialism does not fit the same mode as say Manifest Destiny, or even the "global real politic" mode of contemporary international relations, minus one star.

Four Stars

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What They Did Not Tell You In History Class, October 30, 2008

By	W. CRONE "Careful Shopper" (WI,USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Outstanding. Excellent and very informative. Great read. The downside is that you may not have the same view of this country after reading it. Pay particular attention to the Polk/George W. comparison. Our country has not been kind to non-whites and Catholics over the past 300+ years. What really surprised me was that a very high birthrate allowed us to conquer new territories.