American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home 1945-2000

Joshua B. Freeman. A terrifically useful wide-lens survey of the United States in the last half of the 20th century. Freeman has full command of his vast material, fashioning a structured history that is both readably general and restrained of scholarly matter as well as nicely specific regarding meaty information. The author demonstrates how postwar economic growth helped spur the great process of democratization that placed America in the first rank among nations in terms of standard of living and basic rights for all citizens. Yet, along with the rise of consumerism, globalism and prosperity, the power shifted from the public to the private realm, specifically corporate. A liberal-minded but still evenhanded primer for all students of U.S. history.

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Yankee Come Home: On the Road from San Juan Hill to Guantanamo

William Craig. With a half-century of U.S. antagonism to Cuba's revolution as the back story, a freelancer visits the island nation to report on both its history and current situation. The author's lively history follows locale, not chronology, and he analyzes sugar politics, empire building and the blood-spattered history of slaves, Indians and Spaniards in the New World. We also learn about Cuban culture, including music, spirits, the real Che Guevara, pickpockets, drinking habits and much more. Craig beats his professional predecessors with his skilled and accessible personal journal and blunt history.--Kirkus

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Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World

John W. Dower. No historian writes with more authority than this leading U.S. historian of modern Japan. MIT professor Dower's new work brings together a number of his essays written between 1993 and 2007, and they show him at the top of his form. He's at his best, and unabashedly critical, when analyzing national hypocrisy and the misuses of history and memory, American as well as Japanese. A set of serious, cautionary reflections from a superb historian.--Publisher's Weekly

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Code Name Caesar: The Secret Hunt for U-Boat 864 During World War II

Kenneth R. Sewell. On February 9, 1945, the German U-boat 864 sank in the North Sea off the western coast of Norway. The undersea battle of U-864 and the British Navyas HMS Venturer is the only recorded instance of one submarine stalking and sinking another while both were submerged. With suspense surfacing amid the military intrigue, this latest by Preisler and former submariner Sewell reads like a tense thriller, but the authors also keep a steady course on the human aspect of their tale as they reconstruct the events behind this little-known WWII incident and its aftermath.--Publishers Weekly

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Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq

Greg Muttitt. In this well-reported debut, Muttitt never insists that oil was the sole motive for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As both an activist and freelancer, he makes his sympathies plain from the beginning, but he rejects crude conspiracy theories in favor of a more subtle take: that the occupiers genuinely saw themselves as liberators, never acknowledging their own self-interest in securing an energy supply. He's contemptuous of today's scramble for profits among the likes of ExxonMobil, BP and Shell. No, the war wasn't only about oil, but as one State Department adviser asked, "What did Iraq have that we would like to have? It wasn't the sand." There will be readers who disagree with Muttitt's thesis. They will now be obliged to marshal similarly convincing evidence.--Publisher's Weekly

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Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy

Paul Thomas Murphy. Enlightening study of Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and her reign. Though the book is focused on the attempted assassinations of Victoria, Murphy also shows how those misguided men strengthened both the queen and the empire. It's great fun to see the trail of the author's research as he includes the politics, crises and sensational crimes that went along with each incident. The pages slip by in this well-written new take on Victoria and her times. Murphy's detailed rendering sheds entirely new light on the queen's strengths and her many weaknesses.--Kirkus

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Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day

Stephan Talty. The exciting, improbable adventures of a young Spanish spy who managed to become Britain's most effective tool in deceiving Hitler. The mammoth concerted effort to trick the Germans into believing that the D-Day invasion was not really landing at Normandy but at Calais--despite Hitler's better instincts--required months of careful planning and streams of deceptive information fed to the Germans by agents like Juan Pujol, aka Garbo. A lively, rollicking good read.--Kirkus

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Final Victory: FDR's Extraordinary World War II Presidential Campaign

Stanley Weintraub. Historian Weintraub looks at an ailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's last campaign. In this well-researched, engaging history, Weintraub effectively brings the players to life, portraying the public and private faces of the witty, indomitable FDR and his opponent, the stiff, humorless New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. Weintraub shows how Roosevelt, despite his illness, was still a force to be reckoned with. He continued to give dazzling speeches and enjoyed loyal support from many constituencies, including soldiers still at war, who voted absentee for FDR in large numbers. A well-drawn political history of FDR's last days.--Kirkus

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Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

Keith Lowe. A breathtaking, numbing account of the physical and moral desolation that plagued Europe in the late 1940s. Drawing on recently opened Eastern European archives, Lowe presents a searing and comprehensive view of postwar Europe that calls into question the very nature of World War II. Lowe writes with measured objectivity, honoring the victims of atrocity and understanding the causes of, but refusing to excuse, the violence directed by freed victims against their former oppressors. Authoritative but never dry, stripping away soothing myths of national unity and victimhood, this is a painful but necessary historical task superbly done.--Kirkus

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