The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

A riveting narrative about America's ferocious drive towards empire during the Gilded Age, told by one of our most acclaimed historians.

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, newspapers such as Hearst's New York Journal whipped up a frenzy, claiming that Spain had destroyed the ship. Soon after, the easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops to both Cuba and the Philippines In this rip-roaring history Thomas reveals that the hunger for war had begun years earlier. Depressed by the 'closing' of the Western frontier and embracing theories of social Darwinism, a group of warmongers including a young Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge agitated incessantly that the US exert its influence across the seas. US foreign policy was transformed and when Roosevelt became president there began a war without reason, concocted within the White House - a bloody conflict that would come at huge cost. Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, THE WAR LOVERS is the story of 6 men at the center of history: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, McKinley, William James and Thomas Reed and confirms once more than Evan Thomas is a popular historian of the first rank.