The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 by Evan Thomas





Well done

Published in 2010 by Little, Brown, and Company.

Before this book, I had not had the pleasure of reading one of Evan Thomas' books. I picked The War Lovers up despite these fawning comments by Thomas in June 2009 ("I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world, he's sort of God.") My original thoughts were if this guy can't be any more unbiased in his observations than that, do I really want to read his stab at history?

Well, I am happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised. This is a solid history that is told well. The book flows along nicely and the reader is both entertained and informed.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 
with his men in Cuba
The book's focus is the build-up of public support for the Spanish-American War (1898). As the title notes, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Randolph Hearst are the main subjects in the book but other people round out the story, including Harvard professor and philosopher William James (Pragmatism and Other Writings ), his brother and fellow author Henry James (Henry James: Complete Stories, 1892-1898), Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Read, various surviving family members of deceased Civil War hero Robert Gould Shaw (Glory) and great-grandson and grandson of presidents, Henry Adams (The Education of Henry Adams).

The War Lovers gives the reader a vivid portrait of life among the Eastern Elite in the late 19th century - a world so far removed from my experience that I may have well as been reading about a foreign country. But, in a way, the book was full of plenty of people that I have been reading about all of my life. Thomas takes those empty names and fleshes them out with personality, histories and makes them become much more real. On top of that, it is an entertaining read!

Highly recommended.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 stars and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 by Evan Thomas.

 Reviewed on March 18, 2010.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

THE GILDED AGE: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published in 2019 by Hourly History. What is popularly known as The Gilded Age (roughly from 1870 to 1900) was more than just an era of ostentatious wealth contrasted with crushing poverty. It was mostly a time if immense cultural and technological change and could easily be considered the beginnings of the modern world. This short e-book does a first-rate job of giving the broad strokes of the amazing breadth of changes - changes to communication with the telephone, to transportation with the increased number of trains, but also with the invention of the automobile. Steel became a common construction material and the first skyscraper was built.  None of this industrialization came smoothly, though. The United States went from being an overwhelmingly agrarian society where people worked on family farms or plantations (free, slave, or sharecropper) to being mostly working at paid positions in factories, stores, etc.  On top of that, a record amount of immigrants came to th...
Read more

LULLABY TOWN (Elvis Cole #3) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Image
Book originally published in 1992. Audiobook published by Brilliance Audio in 2008. Read by Mel Foster. Duration: 8 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. Anthony Award Nominee for Best Novel (1993) Shamus Award Nominee for Best PI Hardcover (1993) Synopsis Elvis Cole is hired by a very successful young Hollywood director in Lullaby Town to find his divorced wife and his son that he hasn't seen since he was an infant. It has been ten years since the divorce. His ex-wife hasn't been kidnapped or gone missing - she just moved away and the director has lost track of her. Now, he'd like to meet his son.  The director has to be the single most annoying client that Elvis Cole has ever had. He is pushy, obnoxious, and completely self-absorbed. Elvis notes early on that almost every sentence the man utters starts with "I" as in "I think this" and "I did that." It's pretty obvious why the ex-wife left him and just kept on going with no forwarding address...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: CATWOMAN (graphic novel) by G. Willow Wilson

Image
Written by G. Willow Wilson Art by Jamie McKelvie Synopsis The One Bad Day series is a look at some of the biggest Batman villains in a book just dedicated to that villain. A lot of them, but certainly not all of them, take a sympathetic look at that villain. Batman - One Bad Day: Catwoman is one of the more sympathetic takes.  Catwoman is looking through an auction catalog for high end jewelry when she finds an unusual listing for a piece of post-World War II French jewelry that commemorates the end of Nazi occupation. It is a rare piece with a message of a return to freedom for France's artists its reserve price is $30,000. It is also a piece her mother sold to a pawn shop for only $200 when Catwoman was a child in order to attempt to make her rent money that month. Catwoman decides to take back the jewelry and right a wrong... My Review This one was interesting because the stakes, in reality, are really pretty low - a piece of jewelry that is worth thousands instead of millions...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: CLAYFACE (graphic novel) by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing

Image
Published by DC Comics in 2023. Written by Collin Keely and Jackson Lanzing. Art by Xermánico and Romulo Fajardo, Jr. Synopsis Clayface has moved away from Gotham City and has gone to Hollywood to be a movie star. The original Clayface character from 1940 comic where he premiered was a B movie actor named Basil Karlo. Basil Karlo is working as a waiter in Batman - One Bad Day: Clayface while trying to make it big in Hollywood. He's diligent about everything, but he does not have a light comic touch that is called for in romantic comedies. His roommate does, however. When they both read for the same part it becomes a problem when the roommate gets the part and Basil Karlo doesn't. Being Clayface means you can make yourself look like anyone - at least for a little while. Clayface kills the roommate and then assumes his shape so he can get his big Hollywood break. And then one murder leads to another. And another. And another. And another and so on. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in t...
Read more

BATMAN - ONE BAD DAY: BANE (graphic novel) by Joshua Williamson

Image
Published by D.C. Comics in 2023. Written by Joshua Williamson Art by Howard Porter and Tomeu Morey Synopsis The One Bad Day series looks at individual top level Batman villains (If you are a fan of Johnny Karaoke, sorry) and gives them a comic that focuses on just that villain.  In Batman - One Bad Day: Bane we find Bane working as a professional wrestler in Mexico where he reenacts the moment where be broke Batman's back in match after match to the cheers of adoring crowds. Bane has wealth and fame, but he is broken inside. This graphic novel is the story that explains that brokenness... My Review Up until the halfway point of this graphic novel, I was sure that this edition of the One Bad Day tales was a dud. It was initially very confusing and the drawings seemed to be all overdone muscles, veiny arms, and monstrous faces. The moment that changed the book was a moment of great sacrifice. It changes the arc of Bane's life and makes this a surprisingly hopeful (and grisly...
Read more

BOUND for CANAAN: THE EPIC STORY of the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, AMERICA'S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (audiobook) by Fergus Bordewich

Image
Published by Harper Audio. Read by the author, Fergus Bordewich. Duration: 5 hours, 29 minutes. Abridged. The abridged version of Bound for Canaan hits the highlights of the Underground Railroad movement, but leaves quite a bit out. This is a radically abridged audiobook - fourteen hours of a nineteen hour audiobook were cut out - more than 70% of the book. I did not realize how much it had been abridged until I had already listened to it. What remains is solid, but more of traditional hero study. The reader learns about the Quakers, Levi Coffin and Harriet Tubman and a few other stalwarts of the movement. Frederick Douglass shows up as an example of the Underground Railroad in action. There is a nod to the importance of women in the movement and how that led to the Women's Suffrage movement.  The book goes off track a bit when it comes to John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame. Brown did participate in the Underground Railroad movement, but the book follows him to the Kansas and the ...
Read more

COMMEMORATIVE HISTORY of the GEORGE ROGERS CLARK BICENTENNIAL EXHIBIT by The Indiana State Museum

Image
Published in 1976 by the Indiana State Museum Society. 1976 was the bicentennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence and if you were not alive in 1976, you have no idea how much went into that recognition. Every store had special decorations, every town had commemorations, everyone had red, white, and blue clothing and this went on for a long time - not just on the Fourth of July in 1976. Part of this ongoing celebration took place in museums. The Indiana State Museum had a 3 year exhibit on Indiana's role in the American Revolution. People remember the original thirteen colonies and correctly note that Indiana was not one of those colonies. None of Indiana's immediate neighbors were, either. But, the modern states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois were on the front line of a different kind of war zone during the American Revolution. There were no great ships, no massed armies, and precious few soldiers even wearing an actual uniform - but there were...
Read more

FREE FALL (Elvis Cole #4) (audiobook) by Robert Crais

Image
Originally published in book form in 1993. Published as an audiobook in 2008 by Brilliance Audio. Read by Mel Foster. Duration: 8 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. I found the Elvis Cole novels years ago, but somehow I have been reading them as a I found them rather than trying to trying to read them in chronological order. So, here I am going back more than thirty years to book 4 out of a 20+ book series, depending on how you count some of Crais' other books. Synopsis Like all classic detective novels, in Free Fall we find our intrepid main character in his office when a beautiful young lady enters looking for help with a desperate problem.  This young woman is concerned about her fiance. He is a relatively young member of LAPD and part of a rapid reaction team because he is a promising young officer. When crime pops up in a neighborhood - such as new gang activity or more drug sales or a series of home invasions, this team is sent out to supplement regular officers in the neighborho...
Read more

STAR WARS: DARTH VADER: DARK LORD of the SITH, VOLUME 4 - FORTRESS VADER (graphic novel) by Charles Soule

Image
Published by Licensed Publishing in 2019. Written by Charles Soule. Art by Guiseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini, Terry Pallot, David Curiel, Dono Sanchez-Almara, and Erick Arciniega. Synopsis This series tells the story of the completion of the training that turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. The Emperor is, at best, an emotionally and physically abusive teacher. In Fortress Vader , Darth Vader is granted a planet to use as a home base to complete his studies and perhaps learn how to bring his beloved Padme back from the dead. But, he needs a temple to focus the power of the force and a relic from the Emperor promises to provide what he needs... My Review Soule really likes this relic. It also appears in his Lando comic where it is much creepier. In this comic the relic picks up a comic quality that I don't think was intended. The construction and reconstruction of this temple was not at all interesting to me. This collection was the worst of the series. I rate this graphi...
Read more

THE INSTINCT for COOPERATION: A GRAPHIC NOVEL CONVERSATION with NOAM CHOMSKY (graphic novel) by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson

Image
Published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press. Written by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson. Art by Eliseu Gouveia. Jeffrey Wilson interviewed Noam Chomsky for The Instinct for Cooperation and the results probably would have been a typical interview with Chomsky. The interview was about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the little groups that organically formed within the protests, such as the food tent, the medical tent, and the library.  Wilson wove in interviews that he had done with people who participated in the Occupy Movement, students and teachers who had bad interactions with education "reform" movements, and other topics like student loan debt.  This could have easily been a mess, but Wilson does a very good job of weaving together all of the interviews so that it felt more like a natural free-flowing conversation. The illustrations helped move everything along to make this very digestible. There is a lot of food for thought. Well done. 5 out of 5 stars. This graphic no...
Read more