The eagle triumphant

"Though many Americans are reluctant to admit it, the United States has long been an imperial power - a fact that has become increasingly evident since the war in Iraq. Now, in this book, historian Robert Smith Thompson examines the origins of the American empire in the period spanning the two world wars. Confounding the conventional view of early-twentieth-century America - an idealistic, isolationist nation only reluctantly drawn into world affairs - he shows how the United States deliberately set out to dismantle the British Empire and take over its spheres of influence." "Capturing the…