The pen still scratches. The stamps still fall. But more and more, the room is filling with people who understand the terms—and are deciding, carefully, how much longer they are willing to accept them.
Bibliography
1. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Foundational account of U.S. expansion as settler colonialism and the early normalization of conditional sovereignty.
2. Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. Detailed political and military history of the Mexican–American War and its territorial consequences.
3. Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy. Definitive study of U.S.–Cuban relations, including the Platt Amendment and mechanisms of informal empire.
4. Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903. Analysis of U.S. counterinsurgency and imperial ideology in the Philippines.
5. David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas. Authoritative narrative history of the Panama Canal and U.S. treaty-based strategic control.
6. Mary A. Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940. Examination of U.S. occupation, constitutional revision, and financial governance in Haiti.
7. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Survey of U.S.-backed coups and regime interventions, emphasizing Cold War mechanics.
8. Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War. Pulitzer Prize–winning history of U.S. escalation in Vietnam and the limits of imperial discretion.
9. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. Analysis of U.S. interventionism and authoritarian alliances in Latin America.
10. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Ground-level account of American occupation governance in Iraq and the modern mechanics of empire without annexation.