Reddit reviews How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

fyi How To Hide An Empire is a great book that goes into some of that shady stuff, amongst other less well known historical tidbits about the US...the audio version is great

How to hide an Empire: The history of the Greater United States

Nonfiction books:

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.

I LOVE points 20 & 21 regarding statehood for colonies. There should only states in the United States. No inhabited land, excluding international embassies, should be part of the country, unless it is a recognized state. Therefore, all current US colonies and territories should either be declared independent or be made a state. These include: Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, The US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Washington DC. Check out this fantastic book to learn more about our messed up imperialist history is.

Like...did you know that we almost annexed all of Mexico once we took Texas et.al? There were competing forces in the government, imperialism and white supremacy. The white supremacists didn’t want the rest of Mexico because it was full of non-whites, so they only took the northern half because those people were mostly white. It’s true!

Figures; I'd definitely classify it as such.

You might like the new book by Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide An Empire, which notes that right after WW2 ended, the US directly colonised or occupied enough foreign lands that at one point the population in the occupied/colonial territories exceeded those in the US mainland. Just like classic colonial empires!

On another note, just why was the US content to enforce double standards toward land reform in its Asian sphere of influence? Why enforce/push land reform in Japan or SK to the detriment of existing elites…but over here, why collaborate with our own existing elites at the cost of genuine land reform?

I get why they'd want to sideline elites in Japan since obviously they caused the war, but I guess I'm wondering why exactly would they, in a reversal of their East Asian "colonial policy", prefer to keep playing with the same old boys over here—many of whom obviously were treacherous enough (from the US' point of view) to side with Japan if it suited them?

(Not to excuse them from collaborating with the US, of course.)