Bradley could have used a stronger editor. Sometimes this book becomes too personal, veers from history into polemic, and loses a professional tone. He gets carried away with his apparent anger at Theodore Roosevelt's phony PR image and racist world view. I appreciated his exposing many facts about the US actions in the Pacific, and it clarifies the motives behind them which I had not understood before. Particularly the role of TR in the Russo-Japanese War treaty, giving the green light to the Korean occupation, and the phony nature of his Nobel Peace Prize. It was difficult to read of the actions of US military in the Philippines. We're still living with the effects in our relationships with China, Philippines, Korea, and Japan.

The cruise is used as a sort of mechanism to assemble TR's personal life, all these places and their histories together, but sometimes one gets lost in the digressions, and a better organization would have helped. While TR may have lit the fuse, the administrations which followed after him could have cut it at many points, for example World War I.

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