The true flag : Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the birth of American empire / Stephen Kinzer.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-289) and index.

Introduction
White and peaceful wings
There may be an explosion
The great day of my life
Islands or canned goods
If they resist, what shall we do?
Stinkpot
I turn green in bed at midnight
What a choice for a patriotic American!
The Constitution does not apply
You will get used to it
The deep hurt

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat -- until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country. Stephen Kinzer transports us to the dawn of the twentieth century, when the United States first found itself with the chance to dominate faraway lands. That prospect thrilled some Americans. It horrified others. Their debate gripped the nation. The country's best-known political and intellectual leaders took sides. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Randolph Hearst pushed for imperial expansion; Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, and Andrew Carnegie preached restraint. Only once before -- in the period when the United States was founded -- have so many brilliant Americans so eloquently debated a question so fraught with meaning for all humanity.