The War Lovers

This national bestselling history of late 19th century American war fever is “compulsively readable . . . hard to forget and hard to put down.”*

On February fifteen, 1898, the American ship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in the Havana Harbor. Some in the United States greeted the event with more enthusiasm than alarm. Dismayed by the “closing” of the Western frontier, politicians Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge wanted to see their country exert its muscle overseas. The sinking of the Maine would provide the excuse they’d been waiting for, especially when newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst falsely announced in the New York Journal that Spain’s “secret infernal machine” had destroyed the battleship.Meanwhile, the philosopher William James, Roosevelt’s former teacher, and Thomas Reed, the powerful Speaker of the House, stood against what would become the Spanish-American War. At stake was not only sending troops to fight Spain in Cuba and the Philippines, but the friendships between these men.Now, bestselling historian Evan Thomas examines this monumental turning point in American history. Epic in scope and revelatory in detail, The War Lovers takes us from Boston mansions to the halls of Congress to the beaches of Cuba and the jungles of the Philippines. It is landmark work with an unforgettable cast of characters—and provocative relevance today.

“[An] absorbing narrative of men who found duty or fulfillment or personal meaning in a war for empire.” —*New York Times Book Review

“A complex and compelling book about a complicated chapter in our history, a moment we are too often distracted by outsized personality and huge technological and social progress. But it is a story we need to know.” —Ken Burns