The War Lovers

Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898

By: Evan Thomas

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, yellow newspapers such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal whipped Americans into a frenzy by claiming that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship. Soon after, the blandly handsome and easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops not only to Cuba but also to the Philippines, Spain's sprawling colony on the other side of the world.

As Evan Thomas reveals in his rip-roaring history of those times, 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 that included a young Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge agitated loudly and incessantly that the United States exert its influence across the seas. These hawks would transform American foreign policy and, when Teddy ascended to the presidency, commence with a devastating war without reason, concocted within the White House - a bloody conflict that would come at tremendous cost.

Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, The War Lovers is the story of six men at the center of a transforming event in U.S. history: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, McKinley, William James, and Thomas Reed, and confirms once more that Evan Thomas is a popular historian of the first rank.

©2010 Evan Thomas (P)2010 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Thomas's thesis is bold and will undoubtedly be controversial, but his protagonists make for rich psychological portraiture, and the book serves as an illuminating case study in the sociocultural underpinnings of American military adventurism." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Evan Thomas is a national resource, and this utterly compelling book reminds us why....Most of all, Thomas's book suggests vital lessons for our generation of American leaders and citizens to take very seriously as we confront some of the same public challenges that faced Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries." (Michael Beschloss)

Entertaining History Great Reader

Thomas, the author, is a flaming lefty but nonetheless has given his subjects a fair and entertaining read.
The reader adds to this exponentially.

Excellent and Provoking

As an Black American it was appalling to hear all the white man should rule the world and eradicate and/or subjugate anybody else and scrub the world of any other cultures after cruelly plundering their cultures for anything of value.

However, upon finishing the book I could not help but to admire those men for what they did, and to furthermore recognize how much we all benefit from this conquest. Also, it illustrates the predatory relationships engendered by unregulated free markets, and how foreign war and conquest seems to create these markets where unfettered capitalism can flourish. It also makes one think about what an egalitarian world might look like, and what pirate treasure would have to be returned for true reconciliation and understanding to take root.

History is Cyclic

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. As one who sees parallels in our history, it is apparent that the late 1890s and the 1990s are similar. I see links to imperialism regarding Cuba and other Spanish "possessions" and our current affairs. One critic saw this book as misrepresenting us as imp r realistic, but I must disagree. We did develop a taste for an empire and had mixed results of it. This book also makes me want to study Theodore Roosevelt in much more detail.

Ooh, but the accents...

Would you listen to The War Lovers again? Why?

Yes.

What other book might you compare The War Lovers to and why?

McCulloch, Mornings on Horseback; any good biography of Hearst.

How could the performance have been better?

Good overall reading, but the attempt at a New England accent (chiefly for Tom Reed) yielded a travesty. I grew up there; I can't speak it any more now, but I sure know it when I hear it and this wasn't even close. For a sense of a real New England accent, listen to Marilyn Roach discuss the Salem witch trials, here: http://goo.gl/HJEJTD

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No.

Any additional comments?

No.

Interesting Listen

It was an interesting time in the history of the USA. The old imperialists from Europe were losing their colonies. The book showed how the three main characters shared a vision for America while not being friends. TR and Lodge were best friends but neither cared for Hearst at all. Hearst didn’t like TR. The old saying that politics makes strange bedfellows was so true.
The performance kept the story moving along. It was read more like a novel than a history lesson.

A Rather Poor History

Thomas has produced a rather disappointing tome that fails to provide either good history or good biography of the key figures of the period. The history lacks sound context for placing events in historical perspective, and reeks more of revisionist muckraking than of useful chronicling. The biographical sketches of the main characters are just that - sketchy - lacking balance and completeness. The author is clearly riding a hobby horse, attempting to portray the U.S. as an imperialist state grabbing territory willy nilly. But his prejudices dominate any case that might be made, and his weak attempts to parallel events in the early part of the last decade are feeble at best. Last, but by no means least, the narrator for this volume is as bad as the author. His sarcasm and emotive reading come across as if he were reciting purple prose. This is a decidedly weak effort to illuminate an interesting and dynamic period in American history.