The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley
18 Rating(s)
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The Imperial Cruise
A Secret History of Empire and War

Author: James Bradley

Narrator: Richard Poe

Unabridged: 9 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/24/2009

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

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.

About James Bradley

James Bradley is a writer and critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade, and Ghost Species; a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus; and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. Alongside his books, James has an established career as an essayist and reviewer, whose work has appeared in many publications, including The Guardian, The Monthly, Sydney Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Meanjin, and Griffith Review. His fiction has won or been shortlisted for a wide range of Australian and international literary awards, and his essays and articles have been shortlisted twice for the Bragg Prize for Science Writing and nominated for a Walkley Award. In 2012, he won the Pascall Award for Australia’s Critic of the Year. He is currently an Honorary Associate at the Sydney Environment Centre at the University of Sydney. 


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Betty C. on 2011-08-07 14:10:09

Enjoyed other books by this author, but this tome was too much of a different political flavor than prior books.

AudiobooksNow review by Albert on 2012-12-04 09:56:09

I was absolutely astounded by the subject matter of this book! I had expected it to be a discussion of the cruise itself and honestly wasnt that thrilled at the prospect of reading it.Instead, the book shocked me and presented me with new American History material that I was frankly unaware of. This book is a mustread for every student and scholar of 19th and 20th Century American and Asian History.I came away angry at the sanitized propaganda that all of us have been fed as students of American History at all levels! It is amazing to me that we are opening Soviet archives and discovering new material about the Nazis and the Holocaust almost every day and each new discovery is hailed as a watershed event.Meanwhile a vast amount of American History, much of it in plain sight, is overlooked or ignored presumably because we might be labelled as UnAmerican for speaking the truth. READ THIS BOOK!

Goodreads review by Mal on April 06, 2017

Rarely when history texts or popular books on U.S. history are written are such phenomena as slavery and Jim Crow, the efforts to exterminate Native Americans, the “Yellow Peril,” and the U.S. conquest of Cuba and the Philippines treated as anything other than isolated and disconnected. Dig a little......more

Goodreads review by Tripp on January 20, 2010

James Bradley's The Imperial Cruise is a book that could have been quite good, and perhaps even important, but it isn't. Instead it is a maddening, bitchy book that attempts to reassess Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy. Bradley's thesis is that the American ruling class had an ideology based arou......more

Goodreads review by MK on December 07, 2009

This is not an easy book to read because Bradley forces the American reader to open their eyes to American imperialism. He depicts Teddy Roosevelt perhaps as he really was - not as a real rough rider, but as a gentleman rancher who was a racist at heart. A president who ruled from the gut, made inte......more

Goodreads review by Andy on May 02, 2012

The author seems to be riding his success on prior works. I don't doubt any of his research, but I do doubt the amount of blame that he casts on TR. The thing that is interesting to me is that he seems shocked that Teddy Roosevelt, the best politician of the age, would say one thing and do another.......more

Goodreads review by Alan on February 22, 2010

How does one judge the accuracy or perspective of revisionist history? That is, after all, what The Imperial Cruise is: revisionist history. And Howard Zinn would be proud. In the mode of Zinn, Bradley digs up original documents and straight-from-the-horse's-mouth quotes to build this contrarian case......more