I read this for a history book club--I never would have picked it up on my own--and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The "Imperial Cruise" itself is more of a loose framework Bradley uses to anchor his larger discussion of US foreign policy before and during the McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt administrations. Bradley traces US colonial ambitions in Hawaii and the Philippines back to the concepts of the Monroe Doctrine (kind of a reach), Manifest Destiny, and above all, rampant racism and notions of White Supremacy. Bradley argues that these beliefs also informed TR's disastrous interventions in East Asia, and further insists that those interventions would lead directly to World War II in the Pacific (and, less directly, to the rise of Mao, as well as the Vietnam War).

Bradley's portrait of TR is fascinating, and that alone was worth the read for me. His actively-footnoted case for the role of White Supremacy in TR's foreign policy is excellent, important, and (of course) depressing. The USA's actions in Hawaii and the Philippines are horrific (and I wish I had known about this stuff before I was in my 30s!). His case for TR's actions leading into WWII was fairly convincing for me, the rest of it less so, but nonetheless I found the book a very engaging and educational read.

The book does tend to fall apart near the end, and my impression is that, after all his research into the atrocities committed in the Philippines, all the promises the US broke (to multiple "allies"!), and the epic racism of the time, Bradley was so overwhelmed his grief and anger got the better of him, and he lost the plot (so to speak). I sympathize fully, but it does make for a messy, unsatisfying (and, in places, unconvincing) end to an otherwise excellent book.