Roosevelt - hero of the Cuban campaign, an accidental President who, after being elected in his own right, took on some of the airs of a Theodore Rex - are seen here largely through the eyes of their Secretary of State, John Hay. Published in 1973, are ''Lincoln,'' ''1876'' and ''Washington, D.C.'') Architects of the imperial nation, McKinley - suave, imperturbable, canny - and his successor, the hypomanic Gore Vidal's ''Empire,'' the fifth in his continuing cycle of novels about American history, politics and high society from Jefferson's time to Truman's. ''The will to grow,'' wrote Henry James, returning to his native country after an absence of 21 years, ''was everywhere written large, and to grow at no matter what or whose expense.'' This is the grand theme of
Trust.'' He wanted the white stripes of the national banner painted black ''and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones.'' Policy of dilation and incorporation answered strategic and ideological imperatives of the day, the old cry of Manifest Destiny, and the old itch, in eruption earlier during General Grant's occupation of the White House, to achieveĪ commanding American presence in the Caribbean and Central America, Nicaragua in particular.Ĭommenting on the extermination of more than 100,000 Filipino insurgents who, starting in 1899, rejected the colonizing bear hug of their North American brothers, Mark Twain welcomed the United States to pre-eminence in the ''Blessings-of-Civilization Continued by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, President William McKinley's By 1905 we had also established proprietary protectorates over Panama and the Dominican Republic as well as Cuba. That already included the Hawaiian Islands.
''IT has been a splendid little war,'' wrote John Hay, a central historical figure in Gore Vidal's new novel, during the summer of 1898, a war ''begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligenceĪnd spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave.'' As reward for 10 weeks of intermittent land and sea combat with Spain, the United States acquired Puerto Rico and added Guam and the Philippines to a Pacific empire Section 7, Column 1 Book Review Deskīy JUSTIN KAPLAN Justin Kaplan has written biographies of Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Lincoln Steffens.ĮMPIRE By Gore Vidal. June 14, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
0 kommentar(er)
