THE IMPERIAL CRUISE: A TRUE STORY OF EMPIRE AND WAR PDF, EPUB, EBOOK James Bradley | 608 pages | 21 Jan 2010 | Little, Brown & Company | 9780316072687 | English | New York, United States The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War PDF Book View all 4 comments. Teddy Roosevelt comes across as a bumbling politician with deep-rooted prejudices, apparently completely in vogue at the time as evidenced by popular press and academics who spoke authoritatively on things like the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon superior ability to govern themselves relative to "savages" which included Native Americans, Central America and all of Asia apparently. But reading this book helps in understanding the mindset of those leaders and opportunists who would drag us, through lies, misdirecton and propoganda into conflicts on the far side of the world. As soon as I finished this book, I bought copies for numerous people, and signed up to give a summary of it to a book group. While he does have some legitimate points to make, his completely arbitrary, almost-hysterical point of view renders them not only moot but invisible. What Secret? But I don't see any righteous indignation about any of the other beliefs of the time that turned out to be wrong, and there wer I liked James Bradley's earlier books, but this one's a dud. Examples, snide remarks, appalled declaiming, etc.. In its after effects a conquest may be fraught either with evil or with good for mankind, according to the comparative worth of the conquering and conquered peoples. There are certainly interesting parts of the book. The other two leading characters in the book don't come out unclean either. James Bradley, I am disappointed in you. Skip it. Bradley paints turn of the century America and its politics in a very poor light. Bradley never sums up. How can anyone not detest politicians who behave like this. This is a book that looks mostly at one of those great men in History, Teddy Roosevelt and how much of what we 'know' about him was a myth that he, himself invented. The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests in alien lands. The reality is all concerned, are men of their times and reflect as such. A notable moment in Fathers is when he invites his dad to go to Japan with him as part of his research for the book, and his father declines, saying, "No son, I don't think I'll be making a pleasure trip to Japan. This book is, in a word, drek. I couldn't help but compare his values to that of a certain 20th century d This is not an easy book to read because Bradley forces the American reader to open their eyes to American imperialism. The long standing Anglo-Japanese treaty that provided the Imperial Japanese Navy with their warships and their armament through the 's Look closely at the Japanese 15" twin turrets and you'll recognize the same design as was found on the HMS Hood and many others. America, initially not yet under Roosevelt had systematically betrayed, slaughtered and burned our way across this country. Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you? His "Teddy's" and actually, I'm not going to waste my time listing them, they are patently obvious to any reader of serious history. I listened to the audiobook which has a foreword and afterword by the author If Pearl Harbor was the blast that started the war, what lit the fuse? Coffin Family The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War Writer Did Hitler get his ideas for concentration camps and the eradication of the unfit from the American occupation of the Philippines? Whether they be Indians beneath British rule, Namibians under the German or the Congolese under Belgian rule, it was how colonial lessers were treated by their civilised masters. This is a book that perhaps comes into the category of 'revisionist history', not because Bradley invents some obscure series of events or manipulates facts in a manner to convince the reader to adopt an ideologically flavoured balloon of crud. Jan 03, Kent rated it it was ok Shelves: politics , history-us. I learned a lot, but in the end felt incredibly manipulated and dirty. A president who ruled from the gut, made international pacts without informing the Senate and condoned the use of force and torture against the people of the Philippines. I knew well of the "Philippine Insurgency" and of Dewey in Manila Bay, but seemed to have missed the part in between where we apparently stabbed legimite 'democrats' in the back. Roosevelt, through Taft, encourages Japan to undertake a policy of military expansionism, a policy intended to benefit U. Despite potentially erring in assigning causal relationships to historical events, the well documented facts that are presented are very thorough. NY Times were very critical about the leaps Bradley made in connecting dots between events e. But it has to be read without any preconceived notions about Roosevelt or the attitudes of the United States toward the non-white countries of the Pacific Rim and the Far East. He was willing to deal with them almost as equals, as long as they did not become too powerful. Trivia About The Imperial Crui What impressed me most, however, was the way that this book showcased how our thinking has changed since the turn of the 19th century, when whites assumed that it was impossible for non-whites to attain civilization or achieve democracy. I Highly recommend this! Currently, The Imperial Cruise holds a 3. Flyboys is a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor. Ironically, Roosevelt managed to spark four decades of hatred toward the U. I'm so glad he didn't read the whole book. Professor William N. Now abridged for young people, Flags of Our Fathers is the unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history: the raising of the U. For those familiar with "Flags", Bradley came to write "Cruise" because he wanted to understand why his father came to have to go ashore at Iwo Jima in the first place in WW2 against the Japanese. His overuse of the terms suggested to me an attempt to build his case of how terrible and rascist everyone was. And it was racism — raw, powered by anger, and manifested as a theory of Aryan superiority indistinguishable from the beliefs that drove Adolf Hitler — that account for all those ugly chapters in U. He suggests the founding fathers were white "Aryan" racists who set in motion American westward expansion because it was the destiny of the master race. Most ugly and with the highest costs in human lives China and Korea. If it is less than true, the Roosevelt family should have sued him. View all 25 comments. At the time, Roosevelt was bully-confident about America's future on the continent. Cookies akzeptieren Cookie-Einstellungen anpassen. This is the same theory which a minority opposition party in South Korea has espoused for years to prove that the United States can't be trusted if the North invades. Readers also enjoyed. Reading this, one begins to understand how Hitler would later cite American history as justification for his own agressive racism. Army had brought the Aryan to the Pacific coast", USA Today cited his failure to explain how "in the s, imperial Japan would act on the secret words of a man dead for more than a decade and out of office since What's worse though is the idea that it was the United States rather than Japan's own domestic path and the prevailing norms of the great powers that led the country to imperialism. Perhaps, but Roosevelt was portrayed as even extreme for those times. The author's assertion ignores thousands of years of Asian history and demonstrates that he has a poor grasp on Chinese-Japanese-Korean relations. Mar 25, Alesa rated it it was amazing. In , it is hard to imagine the United States managing to fight the Japanese Army and Navy thousands of miles from major bases Yes, it did to Spain a few years prior, but Spain was on its last legs. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island - an island riddled with sixteen miles of tunnels and defended by Japanese soldiers determined to fight to the death. Jun 02, M rated it did not like it. The author can't seem to decide: is he writing about the title, the cruise to the Far East, is he writing a social history of the time, is he writing about Alice Roosevelt, is he writing about the settling of the Russo-Japanese war, is he writing about American expansionism and manifest destiny and if so on this continent or across the face of the earth, or is he writing abou I found this book to be one of the most troubling I have ever read. Applying today's enlightened understanding to yesteryear's world does not reflect history, but rather, the author's unhappiness with history. Friend Reviews. The era covered here concerns the first political dealings by the United States with the East; Japan, China and Korea. No this song would not be the emotional bottom of this. In this remarkably powerful book, James Bradley takes as his starting point one of the most famous photographs of all time.