The War Lovers
Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

I approached this one with some reservations. Thomas is an inside-the-beltway talking head (or was), who would often show for the Saturday and Sunday political gab-fests. As I recall, I tended to like him better than most, but that's not saying much. He seemed rational. A moderate liberal was my tak......more

Evan Thomas's The War Lovers is a workmanlike account of the Spanish-American War from the perspectives of the men most responsible for causing it. Thomas revisits the blood-and-thunder story of Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst and other imperialists craving national greatness through a s......more

The War Lovers is a spectacular vehicle for understanding the beginnings of the American age of imperialism generally and the Spanish-American War specifically. Evan Thomas should be commended for writing the book in a style that gets the readers hooked from the get-go and tells a true story in a wa......more

The War Lovers is not written for history students or professionals. This alone isn't a problem; understanding American history is not the property of any exclusive club. Both young adults and people who haven't been in a classroom in decades deserve access to history too. The question is whether Th......more

The consequences of wars of choice as seen through the prism of the Spanish American War, and several of its most notable personalities - Theodore Roosevelt, the elder Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the philosopher William James, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, and Speaker of the House of R......more