Books › How to Hide an Empire
How to Hide an Empire
A History of the Greater United States
600 pages
A paradigm-shifting journey that redraws the map of American history, turning familiar narratives inside out.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like putting on a new pair of glasses and suddenly seeing the invisible scaffolding of the world. It moves with a brisk, crackling energy, pulling you through history not with dry dates and treaties, but through vivid, often shocking vignettes. The mood shifts masterfully from the wry amusement of quirky geographical trivia to a deeply unsettling reckoning with the human cost of global dominance. It is an expansive, eye-opening experience that completely reorients your spatial and historical awareness. Perfect for fans of narrative non-fiction who want their foundational assumptions challenged, this is a book that lingers in the mind long after the final page, forever changing how you look at a map.
- Mood
- unsettling
- expansive
- thought-provoking
- astonishing
- Tone
- revelatory
- wry
- critical
- engaging
- sharp
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- hidden histories · invisible power structures · the illusion of borders · the human cost of expansion · geography of influence
- The writing
- Crackling and anecdotal, weaving dense historical research into highly digestible, character-driven vignettes.
- The arc
- Begins with the delight of discovering quirky historical footnotes and deepens into a profound, unsettling reckoning with systemic exploitation.
- Who it's for
- Curious readers who love narrative non-fiction that completely dismantles and rebuilds their understanding of the modern world.
Content notes
- colonial violence
- medical exploitation
- racism
- war themes
- systemic oppression
About the book
We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories―the islands, atolls, and archipelagos―this country has governed and inhabited?
In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.
In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.
Description from Open Library.
Books like How to Hide an Empire
See why they match
Unfamiliar FishesSarah VowellA witty, conversational road trip through the dark, messy, and often absurd history of American imperialism in the Pacific.
The Jakarta MethodVincent BevinsA chilling, meticulously documented unmasking of the brutal mechanics behind the modern global order.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United StatesRoxanne Dunbar OrtizAn unflinching, paradigm-shifting history that shatters national myths to reveal the foundational violence and enduring resistance at the heart of the American story.
Day of EmpireAmy ChuaA sweeping, macro-historical lens on the mechanics of global dominance and the surprising role of tolerance in building empires.
These TruthsJill LeporeA sweeping, lyrical reckoning with the American experiment that measures the nation's brutal realities against its founding ideals.
CasteIsabel WilkersonA paradigm-shifting lens that reframes everything you thought you knew about American history and the invisible architecture of power.