The Imperial Cruise

A Secret History of Empire and War

By: James Bradley

Narrated by: Richard Poe

From the #1 bestselling author of Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys, a startling new look at the events that set the stage for WWII.

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.

In 2005, a century later, James Bradley traveled in the wake of Roosevelt's mission and discovered what had transpired in Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Beijing and Seoul.

In 1905, Roosevelt was bully-confident and made secret agreements that he though would secure America's westward push into the Pacific. Instead, he lit the long fuse on the Asian firecrackers that would singe America's hands for a century.

Will make you blood boil!

As a American, I can't believe how sheltered we are from the truth. We Americans, broke our word and for that started WWII.

this changed me in its focus...

who buried this history...this tell of history not part of my history lessons. I wish it had been

Fantastic Book

This is at times very sad as an American to hear however it is very accurate and very well written. Anyone wanting an honest view of Roosevelt and the United States at the time this book is an excellent choice. The dark history of American imperialism is well covered in this book.

Insightful but talk about beating a dead horse

This book starts out and shocks the reader as Bradley details aspects of Theodore Roosevelt's character and opinions that the American populace at large doesn't know today. He was a racist, Aryan supremacist, lying, no-good, bad-father politician. Then Bradley keeps trying and trying to continue the shock, shoving every last speck of his research onto the page (he repeats himself and even verbatim quotes several times) until it's reeeeeeally old at hour 9. I get it. Roosevelt was not who he seems to have been.

Having had no particular adoration for TR, I didn't need 9 hours of proof handed to me to convince me. I thought this was a bigger story, but it's literally just a TR hate-fest with lots of quotes from speeches and letters that I actually think is inappropriately intrusive (particularly of Alice's writings... she was barely 20 during these events, writing letters in confidence), at the end of which Bradley pretty much blames TR for the Russo-Japanese War, WWII, China's communist revolution and everything that has followed.

All in all, if you're interested in TR and / or history between the US and the Philippines and East Asian nations, you will find this subject matter fascinating because it is a largely-untold story. It's just so TEDIOUS... and also the narrator sounds like a parody of a dramatic movie trailer voice-over.

understanding our relationship to the Asian world.

Loved it? No. 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.