The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley = Shoddy, Leftwing Lunacy

Suggested subtitle:  Teddy Roosevelt was a Racist - a dirty, rotten, AmeriKKKan, White- Christian racist.

One the stupidest, and shoddiest 'history' books I've ever read.  The book covers the 1905 cruise from San Francisco to Japan via China and the Philippines by William Howard Taft and TR's daughter Alice.  The book claims Taft negotiated "secret" treaties with Japan that "sold-out" Korea and eventually lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Maoist China, and the Korean war. At every stop, Bradley gives us a little story of how "White Christians" had destroyed/oppressed/exterminated everyone.

Here are a few samples of the prose:

On the American West:

1. "The Indian survivors of the American race cleansing were locked up as noncitizens, nonvoting prisoners in squalid reservations. And while Lincoln had technically freed the slaves, ...restrictive Jim Crow laws had invisibly re-shackled the American black man, and the lynching tree had plenty of branches left"  (page 34).
2. "Buffalo Bill was the embodiment of the blond Aryan who sowed civilization as he race-cleaned his way west"
3. General Sherman - who commanded the Indian wars from 1866-1884 ordered his troops "During an assault soldiers cannot determine between male and female..." They did not, and through the decade the Indian dead included thousands of mothers, children, elderly, some killed merely for sport, their private parts sliced off and used to make wallets or decorative hats, their scalps and genitals displayed as trophies  Page 67 
4. With his own Indians, the American Aryan had been quick to make treaties that Congress would later disregard.
5. The US Army had waged a race war in the American West, shooting civilians, killing women and children, executing prisoners, raping women, torturing captives,  looting and burning village, and herding the defeated into concentration camps. Now, they would chew through the agricultural, pre-industrialized Philippines. - page 118

On the US-Mexican War 

1. Polk ordered Taylor into Mexican territory between the two rivers [Rio Grande and Nueces]... Mexican historians refer to the US actions as "the American Invasion".  Taylor's incursion was brutal, with massacres of Mexican civilians and rapes of local women.  (page 63).

On the Spanish-American War and Cuba

1. Not one shred of evidence ever existed to suggest that the Spanish blew up the Maine.  Page 77 
2. McKinley conjured up the fantasy that when an American soldier pointed a gun at a Foreign other he was there to help.  Page 79
3. In contrast to the American Revolution, the Cuban freedom fighters would've won their independence without foreign help.  Page 80
4. Instead Americans  informed shocked Cuban freedom fighters that the old Spanish Civil authorities - white men - would remain in charge.  No Cubans would be allowed to confer on the surrender or sign it.