HOW to HIDE an EMPIRE: A HISTORY of the GREATER UNITED STATES (audiobook) by Daniel Immerwahr

 

Published in 2019 by Recorded Books.
Read by Luis Moreno.
Duration: 17 hours, 25 minutes.
Unabridged.

If I asked you to think of a map of the United States you would almost certainly imagine the contiguous 48 states and maybe imagine the little inset maps of Alaska and Hawaii. 

But, you probably would not imagine other areas like American Samoa being a part of that map. How about Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands even though the people who live there are American citizens? How about Puerto Rico? Puerto Ricans are citizens and Puerto Rico has a population bigger than at least 15 states.

How to Hide an Empire is about how America has maintained an empire of sorts from the very beginning. At first, it was by continually moving out of the official states into Indian territory, Mexico, Spanish territory and English territory. The United States took several strategic "guano" islands that were not claimed by anyone in the late 1800s. The United States has held a traditional empire since the Spanish-American War in 1898 when it took the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and Cuba. It went on the acquire other properties by trading and conquering during the World Wars (the World War II section of this book is excellent).

Nowadays, the United States maintains a hybrid empire. It has kept some territories and turned others into states (Hawaii and Alaska) but it has also tried something new. 

The United States seems to have learned a lesson with its experience in the Philippines. The United States spent a lot of time, treasure and blood pacifying the Philippines only to have it become a liability during World War II - the Japanese attacked it within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. quickly granted the Philippines its independence and changed its "business model".

Rather than conquer and hold other countries, the United States has maintained an immense series of bases and installations across the world. The most famous is probably Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but others include Ramstein Air Base in Germany with 53,000 people.

On the other end of the spectrum there are also tiny little properties that house radio listening stations or broadcasting stations.   According to this article by the Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, the United States has about 750 foreign military installations around the world -  three times as many installations as all other countries combined. Note the article is an opinion piece and the Cato Institute is generally of the opinion that the U.S. military should pull back. They always write with a political point in mind, but I don't usually find the Cato Institute to be untruthful.

This was an interesting look at American history. Some of it is shameful - such as the medical experimentation that has done on unsuspecting Puerto Ricans. Some of it is amazing - such as the immense supply chain that the U.S. used to supply Chinese forces and help keep the Japanese bogged down in China throughout the war. The supply line flew through 4 continents, over two oceans, the world's largest desert and over the world's tallest mountain range. It supplied the model for the base system the United States uses now. 

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW to HIDE an EMPIRE: A HISTORY of the GREATER UNITED STATES by Daniel Immerwahr. 

SLEEPING GIANTS (Themis Files #1) (audiobook) by Sylvain Neuvel

Published in 2016 by Random House Audio.
Multicast performance.
Duration: 8 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

One of my favorite audiobook bloggers wrote a gushing review of this entire trilogy. It was such an enthusiastic review that I almost got all 3 books in the trilogy based on his word alone.

I am glad I didn't.

****Warning: Spoiler Alert****

Sleeping Giants is derivative of two other works of science fiction - and they're not the finest bits of sci-fi. Imagine a mash-up of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Pacific Rim and you've pretty much got this book.

It is like Pacific Rim in that you've got a giant robot weapon that has to be operated by two people at the same time to work. It's like Power Rangers in that certain people have been randomly "chosen" to operate this robot and possibly defend the earth from alien attack.

The chosen ones get to suit up and use the
mighty morphin powerbot in this audiobook.

****Spoilers continue****

The alien threat never materializes and there's an awful lot of weird Cold War politics going back and forth as the United States literally violates the air space of every country on the planet in its quest to find all of the parts of this gigantic mighty morphin powerbot. 

Most of the book, however, doesn't include any action at all. The book is designed to be read as a series of government reports and interviews read and heard one after another to tell the story. Imagine all of the action of reading a report or listening a government after action interview and you get the idea.

This is not to say that this book has nothing going for it, but it is too slow, too unrealistic.

On top of that, I really hated the voice of the unnamed character that I called "The Interrogator". He over-enunciated everything and interrupted constantly. It was the part as written, but the actor just botched all of the interruptions. They didn't sound natural - they sounded like when a bad high school actor reads an interruption in an under-rehearsed play.

****Even more SPOILERS****

And, worst of all - the book isn't even internally consistent. For example, at one point a character puts on the helmet to interface with the robot and all of her bodily injuries are immediately and painfully healed. When another robot operator is horribly injured, no one even discusses using the magical healing helmet. Not once.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SLEEPING GIANTS (Themis Files #1) (audiobook) by Sylvain Neuvel.

Bye Bye Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, and Their Underdog Crusades to Redraw America's Political Map by Bill Kauffman

While I am sympathetic to a point, Kauffman drives his point home with so much rancor and vigor that I ended up being both bored and repulsed.

Published in 2010 by Chelsea Green Publishing.

Bye Bye Miss American Empire takes what should have been a fun look at the various groups that want to split apart current U.S. states and/or make independent countries out of U.S. states and turns it into a long, repetitive, angry rant about American foreign policy, both Presidents Bush and the United States (indivisible, as the pledge goes) in general.

Kauffman starts off on the right foot with an introduction to these various splinter groups (or groups that wish to splinter America, to be more accurate) by taking the reader to a meeting of secessionist movements from all around the country in Vermont. For me, this was the first and last enjoyable chapter.

Kauffman then launches into an extended discussion of secessionist movements in America in which he "scores points" by making multiple snide comments about the Constitution's use of the phrase "more perfect" (just to clarify, it means that it is intended to push the Union closer towards perfection, not that it was already perfect and now it becomes even more so), advocates the murder of Founding Fathers (Alexander Hamilton on page 13) and gets into a political argument with a master politician (Abraham Lincoln, on page 34) that only serves to demonstrate that Kauffman has not truly listened to what Lincoln was saying. Lincoln declared that "secession is the essence of anarchy." Kauffman scoffs and fails to truly follow Lincoln's logic. If New York City were to secede from the United States (a popular notion, Kauffman notes,  several times in American history), what would make it stop there? Could the Bronx secede from New York City? Could an individual neighborhood secede from the Bronx? Could an apartment building secede from that neighborhood? Could a single apartment secede from that building? Could an individual person in a room secede from that apartment? That would indeed be anarchy and that was the argument that Lincoln was making.

Kauffman moves on to explore the idea of New York State and New York City separating. I truly have sympathy for the upstate New Yorker. The provincial, self-important thinking of NYC is difficult for anyone in "flyover country" to stomach -  being politically attached to it must be frustrating in the extreme.

The Great Seal of the
proposed State of
Jefferson.

Other secessionist movements covered in this book include Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, the South and various movements to create 2 or more states out of several states, including a very commonsense one to break California up into 2, 3 or even 4 states. Kauffman's description of the various attempts to turn northern California and parts of southern Oregon into the State of Jefferson is quite interesting.

Kauffman makes his points throughout the book and can write with an amusing twist. Unfortunately, he throws in so many other snide comments and forced witty observations that don't really tell the reader anything except Kauffman's political leanings that I found myself wondering if this book could have been shrunk by 40 or 50 pages if a strong-handed editor had taken control of this project. Kauffman tells you early on his opinion on Bush, the War on Terror and why the principle of "one man, one vote" is unfair (I am not sure why he thinks rural voters should get more representation than urban voters, but he does). He also tells you about these items in the middle and at the end of the book many, many times. Enough already! Is this a book about secessionist movements in America or a personal political rant?

Long story short - great topic, maybe even the right guy to write this book, with the proper editor. But, in the end, I found that the topic was overwhelmed by all of the other baggage.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Bye Bye, Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, and their Underdog Crusades to Redraw America's Political Map

Reviewed on December 18, 2010.