

William Walker's Wars
How One Man's Private American Army Tried to Conquer Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras
Author: Scott Martelle
Narrator: David Colacci
Unabridged: 12 hr 7 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 01/30/2019
Categories: Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, History, Us History, Latin American History
Synopsis
William Walker was the outlier. Short, slender, and soft-spoken with no military background—he trained as a doctor before becoming a lawyer and then a newspaper editor—Walker was an unlikely leader of rough-hewn men and adventurers. But in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua. Neighboring governments saw Walker as a risk to the region and worked together to drive him out—efforts aided, incongruously, by the United States' original tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt.
William Walker's Wars is a story of greedy dreams and ambitions, the fate of nations and personal fortunes, and the dark side of Manifest Destiny, for among Walker's many goals was to build his own empire based on slavery. This little-remembered story from U.S. history is a cautionary tale for all who dream of empire.