“For want of a nail,” begins the old fable about small actions with disastrous consequences. How much worse are the results when the actions are not small to begin with? The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers, brings that very question to American history, particularly the last great push of American imperialism at the start of the twentieth century. Bradley presents a tale of a United States steeped in an expansionist myth that Anglo-Saxon “civilization” was destined to dominate all lesser cultures and races, and that the white American race was called “to follow the Sun” to bring that same civilization across the Pacific to Asia, just as their British ancestors brought it across the Atlantic. That other races and cultures might already consider themselves civilized, or might not want the “benefits” of Anglo-Saxon culture, was unconsidered, even unfathomable to the American leaders of the day. At the top of that list of leaders, Bradley asserts, was Theodore Roosevelt.

The titular cruise was a “grand tour” of Pacific Asia undertaken by Alice Roosevelt, Teddy’s popular eldest daughter, under the chaperonage of then-Secretary of War William Taft. Seen mostly as a publicity stunt and a celebration of America’s supposedly benevolent conquest of the Philippines, Bradley reveals how the cruise served as a cover for secret, possibly unconstitutional diplomatic meetings with Imperial Japan on the part of Taft. Unfortunately, as Bradley reveals, it should have also served as a warning on how misguided that diplomacy was—indeed, how poorly the Americans understood the cultures and governments they were dealing with, and how little thought Roosevelt and Taft gave to the possible results of their efforts.

With each port of call, Bradley examines the history and policy that made each significant, both to America at large and to Roosevelt himself. From the greedy takeover of Hawaii to the brutal subjugation of the Philippines to diplomatic blunders in China and Korea, Bradley uses each stop to expose how readily American ideals fell away under the twin impulses of imperialism and racism. Along the way, Bradley examines Roosevelt’s personal character, the beliefs that motivated him and the ways in which he acted to control the public’s perception of him and exaggerate his personal and public exploits. What results is a far cry from the glorious, fun-loving, can-do leader carved into Mount Rushmore. Bradley’s Teddy is more of an egomaniac and short-sighted bully than visionary leader, and his racial politics are particularly repulsive to modern eyes.

This is not an easy book to read; the list of abuses fostered by American policy and militarism at the time range from racial massacres to officially sanctioned rape. Most would be treated today as war crimes of the worst sort. For readers used to glorious depictions of American progress, this book will be uncomfortable, to say the least.

And it is not without flaws: Bradley’s eagerness to expose and denounce Roosevelt’s character and American excesses becomes quickly pronounced. In asserting that Theodore Roosevelt’s policies and secret diplomacy were directly responsible for Japanese imperialism in Asia, Bradley goes so far as to lay the blame for World War II solely at Teddy’s feet. Indeed, Bradley writes as if the Japanese government had no culpability for any of its choices during the war, and only took action because of someone who’d been dead for over thirty years—an eyebrow-raising conclusion indeed.

Still, Bradley does an effective and important job of skewering the myth of Teddy, exposing the racism and classism which guided the president’s philosophy, politics and policies. Likewise, the American atrocities in the Philippines under McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft deserve to be exposed, as does Roosevelt’s poor faith with regards to Korea, his blinders towards Japanese ambitions and his failure to see past his own racism to recognize the value (and even superiority) in the cultures and peoples he sought to “civilize.” In these respects, The Imperial Cruise is an important contribution to a realistic understanding of America’s history, good and bad, and the views that other cultures, particularly in Asia, hold toward the United States. It also serves as a powerful reminder that the course we choose today is influenced by choices made long before, and will have its own influence, for good and ill, on the world that comes after us. We ignore such lessons at our own peril.

Howard Shirley is a writer from Franklin, Tennessee.

Near the historic seaside community of Gloucester, Massachusetts, lies a 3,600-acre woodland known as Dogtown. Once a colonial village, it was abandoned nearly 200 years ago—although “abandoned” might not be the appropriate term. Its history of pirates, witches, ghosts and unearthly forces has been a magnet ever since to those seeking a closer commune with all of nature’s forces. One such person is Elyssa East. Her book Dogtown is at once a memoir, a narrative of the region’s history and the story of the violent crime that occurred there in 1984.

Growing up in Georgia, East was fed on tales of“Revolutionary and Civil War heroes, and of plantation noblesse oblige.” As a child, she wanted to be like these people, but felt she never could. She believed, though, that there must be a region and a history to which she could belong. Dogtown, she thought, might be that place.

East learned of Dogtown (named for the 18th-century widows who kept dogs for protection) through the paintings of Marsden Hartley, an American artist who painted the giant boulders (many 20 feet tall) deposited there during the Ice Age. Suffering from his own personal demons, Hartley went to Dogtown in the summer of 1931. He fell under the region’s mystical spell and again found his muse. One particular painting, “Mountains in Stone, Dogtown,” captured East’s imagination. As she writes, “I began to wonder what kind of story a place named Dogtown would tell. I imagined that one day I would find this unusual landscape and the source of Hartley’s inspiration, as if doing so would complete some undone part of me.”

In Dogtown, East uses alternating chapters to chronicle her personal experiences, the town’s history and the grisly murder of schoolteacher Anne Netti in 1984. This brutal slaying put a curse on the region that, until recently, kept most people away. Only now, she believes, is Dogtown becoming cherished again.

East’s research is meticulous. If, at times, there is more historical information than necessary, it can be forgiven. She may not have found exactly what she was looking for in Dogtown, but she did find an abundance of material for a worthy first book.

Rebecca Bain is a freelance writer in Nashville.

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Anita Diamant’s novel, The Last Days of Dogtown.

Once, back when conservation was taught in schools, every youngster heard the teacher say, “To see what man has wrought, go to Europe. But to see what God has wrought, come to America.” While the Old World has its palaces and cathedrals, Americans have Yosemite, Yellowstone and the nearly 60 other national parks that comprise our “empire of grandeur.” A sumptuous new book, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, recounts the history and preservation of these treasured places.

The book is a visual adventure, like its companion, the recently aired PBS production of the same name. Ken Burns and crew shot 150 hours of film and collected 12,000 archival photographs, distilling their work here. Of course they include such iconic places as the sun-splashed Grand Tetons of Wyoming and the valley of the Colorado River. Less well known but equally breathtaking are Oregon’s Crater Lake in winter and the Dakota badlands. Some of the historic pictures—chiaroscuro studies—feel nearly three-dimensional. Others touch the heart, including one of John Muir as an old man, broken by the loss of his beloved Hetch Hetchy Valley, flooded for a reservoir.

Filmmaker Burns’ works are abundant with characters. This story of “America’s best idea” is likewise a story of people: those who first saw these spirit-lifting landscapes, reported on them to the world and fought for their protection—or tried to destroy them for profit. Theodore Roosevelt inevitably bestrides these pages. Muir, a close friend, called him “the most vital man on the continent,” and with good reason: during his presidency (1901-09), more than 280,000 square miles—a total area larger than Texas—were placed under protection of some kind.

Less famous heroes also gave their working lives to the conservation cause, writing articles, making speeches and lobbying politicians to save places with canyons, glaciers and giant trees. After an early life of dissolution, Horace Kephart took refuge in the mountain fastness of eastern Tennessee in 1904, where he witnessed logging companies laying waste to vast tracts of ancient timber. Owing his life to the wilderness, he joined the movement to save what was left. He was rewarded in 1934, when another President Roosevelt signed the law creating the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

When the authors refer to “the scripture of nature,” it becomes clear that their journey to make this stunning book was very much like a pilgrimage—and we are the richer for it. 

Jim Summerville writes from Dickson, Tennessee.

In General Sherman’s Christmas, award-winning author and historian Stanley Weintraub has provided an engrossing, up-close-and-personal narrative describing Union General William T. Sherman’s famous month-long “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, just before Christmas in 1864. Weintraub has built a name for himself by shedding light on some of history’s most memorable holidays, and this latest addition is another success.

In his daring 300-mile foray across the state, Sherman’s plan was not to enjoin his troops in battle, but to cut an intimidating swath with his army of 62,000 men through the civilian heart of Georgia, destroy Confederate supplies, and strike a psychological blow to civilian morale, convincing the populace of the futility of the Rebel effort.

A risky venture indeed, and to ensure its success, Sherman had to cut himself off from all avenues of supply and communication with the rest of the Union army. His troops had to forage for the 300 tons of food they needed to consume each day throughout the march. No humvees here, these soldiers marched with packs and muskets through the desolate and tarnished Georgia landscape, completing anywhere from 10 to 15 miles a day and confiscating everything edible in their path. While leaving the populace and most homes relatively untouched, they burned cotton gins, granaries, supply depots and armories, and destroyed rail lines and bridges as they went, in what later historians would call an early example of “total war” strategy.

A hero to Northerners, who welcomed news of the Union’s advance through the deep South, and a blackguard and villain to the civilian population through whose fields and forests he tramped, Sherman’s daring strategy paid off, and he was able to telegraph his now-famous message to President Lincoln on December 22: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah with 150 heavy guns & plenty of ammunition & also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” Sherman’s march had effectively ended all chances for the survival of the Confederacy.

Weintraub has filled his book with the reminiscences of actual participants in the momentous events, from an officer’s poignant description of soldiers’ songs echoing from campfire to campfire in the dusk, to the diary entries and letters of terrified Southern women desperate to find food after their carefully filled larders have been looted by passing troops, to the false optimism in the headlines of Confederate newspapers. These contributions form the real tapestry of the narrative, and furnish a dramatic backdrop to the march that changed the face of the war. By April of 1865, the Southern cause was dead.

The recent “Station Fire” in California’s Angeles National Forest, the worst in Los Angeles County history, burned more than 160,000 acres and killed two firefighters. In comparison, the 1910 Northern Rockies forest fire remembered in The Big Burn covered nearly 3.2 million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana. At least 85 people were killed, most of them members of ill-trained firefighting crews.

That blowout, the biggest wildfire in American history, devastated the economy of a booming timber and mining region. It traumatized the survivors—and as New York Times columnist Timothy Egan shows in The Big Burn, it set the course for U.S. forest conservation for the next hundred years, for good and ill.

The national forests that burned were brand new, the product of President Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation crusade. Spurred on by fellow aristocrat Gifford Pinchot, the founding head of the National Forest Service, Roosevelt had worked at breakneck pace to protect millions of acres from logging, railroad and mine companies. But when Roosevelt left office, the land barons’ allies in his own party starved the Forest Service of resources, and forced out Pinchot.

The scope of the disaster and the heroism of so many forest rangers turned public opinion in favor of conservation at a crucial moment. National forests were subsequently created throughout the country, and the Forest Service became a thriving agency.

For his National Book Award-winning account of the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, Egan was able to interview survivors. For The Big Burn, he had to comb through Forest Service reports, memoirs and old newspapers. But he’s equally effective here in telling the story through individuals—the homesteaders, the fire crews of immigrants and drifters, the idealistic Ivy League grads who followed Pinchot’s siren call to the Forest Service.

Egan is a gorgeous writer. His chapters on the “blowup,” when thousands fled burning towns and desperate fire crews burrowed in mine shafts or submerged in streams to escape the inferno, should become a classic account of an American Pompeii.

Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.