something that i think this book does really well is how it manages to be a genuinely conversational history book. i find that a lot of history books i read tend to get bogged down with the dates and timelines, which is probably more of a personal thing rather than a history book thing, but it was a pleasantly surprising experience to read this book. 

as for the actual book itself, i did genuinely learn a lot about american imperialism, especially US involvement in the philippines. although my history classes in school briefly covered american expansionism, immerwahr provided much more context that allowed me to better understand the full extent of the atrocities the united states committed in their former colonial holdings. 

i personally felt like the first half of the book was much stronger than the second half, and i also think that immerwahr spent most of his time on the philippines compared to the other sections on guam and puerto rico. i also felt like he circled around and around the main point instead of deliberately and explicitly coming out against imperialism and neocolonialism. yes, we're not in the philippines anymore, but the united states continues to exploit others in the pursuit of resource accumulation and capital. we are still hiding the empire, and yet, immerwahr never expands on that or extends the history to the modern-day reality.