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Nonesuch Nonfiction Book Club

Nonesuch Nonfiction Book Club

Let the adventure begin. Join PSPL's newest book club: the Nonesuch Nonfiction Book Club led by Sean R. Corbin, a PSPL Librarian.

The group meets the 3rd Thursday of the month September through May in The Learning Center at the Palm Springs Public Library from 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

To receive meeting information and join the email list for the Nonesuch Nonfiction Book Club, please email Sean R. Corbin in advance of the meeting at sean.corbin@palmspringsca.gov

November 17, 2022

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

How to Hide an Empire A History of the Greater United States—Named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune
A Publishers Weekly best book of 2019

—A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories―the islands, atolls, and archipelagos―this country has governed and inhabited?

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.

In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

 

 

 

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