The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire

Should the United States use its military to dominate foreign lands? It's a perennial question that first raised more than a century ago during the Spanish American War. The country’s political and intellectual leaders took sides in an argument that would shape American policy and identity through the 20th century and beyond.

Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Randolph Hearst pushed for imperial expansion; Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, and Andrew Carnegie preached restraint. Not since the nation's founding had so many brilliant Americans debated a question so fraught with meaning for all humanity.

As Stephen Kinzer demonstrates in The True Flag, their eloquent discourse is as relevant today as it was then. Because every argument over America’s role in the world grows from this one.