EMPIRE BY DEFAULT : The Spanish - American War and the Dawn of the American Century by Musicant, Ivan

New York 1998, Henry Holt, 2nd US edition, hard bound in dust jacket 6 1/2 x 9 1/2, , Fine/Fine condition, ix, 740 pages, illus, maps, notes, bibliog, index. ......................................................... "I shall never get into a war," President McKinley said just thirty-three days after the battleship Maine blew up in the harbor of Havana. But an America just far enough removed from the gore of the Civil War to think battle a romantic testing ground was at fever pitch. War would come, and with it, seismic changes in world power alignments. After this, America's first imperial overseas adventure, the nation would be acknowledged internationally as a global player with a navy second to none. And if the army fared less well in its "splendid little war" (despite the best efforts of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders), no one seemed to notice. It was the dawn of the American Century.Now, moving from the councils of Madrid to the conferences in Washington, from the victory at Manila Bay to the battle of San Juan Hill, from factional in-fighting to inflammatory journalism, prizewinning historian Ivan Musicant offers a dramatic narrative that, in this centenary year, will stand as the definitive account. This is military and diplomatic history at their best........................................................................... Step-by-step, Musicant takes the reader through the thicket of arguments and decisions that led to America's almost accidental mantling as an imperial power. Here are the issues and debates, the strategies and obstacles, the ideals, interests, and missed opportunities. Here, too, are the political conflicts of the day-conflicts that America would encounter repeatedly in the century to come and that reveal as much about the flaws in its governmental system as they do about the ambiguities in the nation's vision of itself.