The Five Best Books for Understanding Trump’s Dreams of Empire
The US president’s hunger for new territory feels outdated to this historian. These titles give context to his goal of control.
In his 2019 book, How to Hide an Empire, US historian Daniel Immerwahr argues that America began losing its appetite for territorial expansion in the 20th century as flag-waving colonialism fell out of vogue around much of the world. “I’d say Trump drives a truck through my thesis,” Immerwahr acknowledged when Bloomberg Businessweek reached out to him in search of some book recommendations that might help readers fathom the president’s obsession with annexing Greenland and reasserting US control over the Panama Canal. “My sense is that Trump is deeply uncomfortable with the form of US power that has been dominant since World War II, which its fans called the liberal international order and its critics called Pax Americana,” says the Northwestern University professor. “But either way, it involves forms of power projection that often involve diplomacy with other countries, trade deals, military pacts, alliances of various kinds, and I think Trump really hates it all. And so I think he is casting around for earlier forms of US power.”
These are Immerwahr’s picks in his own words. (Entries have been edited for clarity and length.)