This book wouldn’t have been remotely possible without the work of previous scholars who have insisted, for decades, that the U.S. Empire is a worthy object of study. My citations convey only a small fraction of my debts to them.
Nor were those the only debts accrued. I began my research in 2011 on a yearlong fellowship at Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought. The National Endowment for the Humanities funded another year’s research at the Huntington Library (with support from my employer, Northwestern University). An Andrew Carnegie Fellowship allowed me to finish the thing. The three uncluttered years these fellowships provided were an obscene privilege, the contemplation of which often reduces me to guilty twitching.
Putting me still further in the red are the debts to colleagues who took the time to read chapters and offer their suggestions, corrections, and/or alarmingly accurate disquisitions on my personal and intellectual inadequacies. They were unstinting and, lacking any realistic prospect of repayment, I offer my bare gratitude here. May glory everlasting shine upon Ken Alder, Hannah Appel, Seth Archer, Beth Bailey, Juliana Barr, Kathleen Belew, Daniel Bessner, Megan Black, Brooke Blower, Catherine Carrigan, Oliver Charbonneau, Will Chou, Patrick Chung, Brian DeLay, Kornel Ehmann, José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez, David Farber, Dexter Fergie, Ted Fertik, Caitlin Fitz, Camilla Fojas, Danna Freedman, Andrew Friedman, Paul Frymer, Margaret Garb, Lally Gartel, Adam Goodman, Antara Haldar, Gretchen Heefner, Laura Hein, Mariah Hepworth, Rebecca Herman, Lauren Beth Hirshberg, Hi‘ilei Hobart, Alex Hobson, Phil Hoffman, A. G. Hopkins, James Hudspeth, Adam Immerwahr, Julia Irwin, Sheyda Jahanbani, Sylvester Johnson, Tim Johnson, Peter Kastor, Jinah Kim, Sam Kling, Naomi Lamoreaux, Henri Lauzière, Sam Lebovic, Bobby Lee, Niko Letsos, Beth Lew-Williams, Erez Manela, Dan Margolies, Diana Martinez, Rebecca McKenna, Alison McManus, Fred Meiton, Stephen Mihm, Sarah Miller-Davenport, Garrett Dash Nelson, Tore Olsson, Louis Pérez, Margaret Power, Andrew Preston, Bill Rankin, Ben Remsen, Paul Rhode, Ariel Ron, Eric Rutkow, Daniel Sargent, Nitasha Sharma, Carl Smith, Susan Smith, George Spisak, Helen Tilley, Jonathan Winkler, and Marilyn Young. My fellow Huntingtonians, busy with books of their own, charitably faked interest as I tried my thoughts on guano and hookworm out on them. (“Perhaps you could branch out to other topics?” was the sage though ultimately fruitless advice.) In that group, Danna Agmon, Tom Cogswell, Alice Fahs, Dena Goodman, Steve Hindle, Peter Lunenfeld, Tawny Paul, and Asif Siddiqi are to be particularly commended for keeping their eye-rolling to a minimum.
Other readers, hallowed be their names, risked still higher levels of exposure to this book in its radioactive draft state. Alvita Akiboh, Michael Allen, Kevin Boyle, Gerry Cadava, Doug Kiel, Susan Pearson, and Mike Sherry donned lead aprons and tentatively probed large chunks of the manuscript at a workshop at Northwestern. For his aid with the military-related chapters, Colonel Aaron O’Connell deserves a Purple Heart. Deborah Cohen, David Hollinger, Tanner Howard, John Immerwahr, Tom Meaney, Sam Means, and Stephen Wertheim, placing concerns for personal safety and future reproductive health aside, read the entire manuscript. Their advice mattered enormously.
Special mentions are due to Brooke Blower, for drawing my attention to the empire-concealing aspects of FDR’s Pearl Harbor speech, and to Herman Eberhardt, for helping me understand its context. Chris Capozzola introduced me to the term Greater United States. Katharina Pistor recruited me to Standardization Studies. A. G. Hopkins generously shared the fruits of his own research in imperial history. Another mention is due to Ken Alder. “Nothing is more boring than the histories of engineering and chemistry,” Ken once told me. “And nothing is more interesting.” He was right, and it was under Ken’s influence that I saw just how interesting boring things could be.
I read Julian Go’s lucid Patterns of Empire at the start of my research, and it’s still ringing in my ears (Julian bravely read a large portion of this book). Bill Rankin’s After the Map also induces tinnitus. I’ve adapted “territorial pointillism,” a featured concept in that book, for my own purposes.
Talk of After the Map brings me to another sinkhole of uncomfortably deep debt. When I began, I knew nothing about making maps. Katie Chiu, Dave Sivertsen, and Ann Aler remedied that. Kelsey Rydland of Northwestern completed the training, which required hours of patient instruction of the “No no, you have to right click” variety. Having Bill Rankin on hand to critique the results was like getting Putt-Putt pointers from Tiger Woods. David Vine shared his astonishingly comprehensive data set for the world map of military bases, and Bobby Lee talked me through the complex business of nineteenth-century land cessions for my Indian Country map.
Throughout this project, I’ve had the luck of working with highly capable research assistants: Callie Leone, Ryan Scales, Eddie Stein, and Adam Voortman.
One always learns from one’s students, but rarely has a professor been as thoroughly schooled as I have by Alvita Akiboh and Michael Falcone. They read drafts, did research, and hashed out nearly every aspect of this book with me, from plot to prose. I’ve been greatly edified, to say the very least, by Akiboh’s dissertation on the material culture of the overseas territories and Falcone’s on the technologies of U.S. hegemony.
Edward Orloff of McCormick Literary has been far more than an agent. He’s been an indispensable collaborator, to be praised for both his perspicacity and his patience. (“Edward, I think this book should be eight hundred pages and solely about infrastructure in the Second World War.” “Mmm, I see. And why do you think that?”) It was Edward who proposed the scope and structure of this book, Edward who set its tone.
And Edward who dropped me into the deft hands of Alex Star at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “You’re working with Alex Star?” was the spit-take reaction this news often elicited. The reputation is entirely deserved. Alex edited with gentle but authoritative discernment, saving me from my worst habits and encouraging my best. FSG’s intrepid Dominique Lear kept things moving briskly, Maxine Bartow hunted down textual errors like a hungry eagle terrorizing a rabbit warren, and, over at The Bodley Head, Stuart Williams and Jorg Hensgen offered sage advice from afar. To them all, I raise a full glass.
Finally, life occasionally contains things beyond books. For this, I thank Lucas Alvarez, Erin Barnes, Brianna Benner, Gloria Bruce, Catherine Carrigan, Lally Gartel, Miklos Gosztonyi, Marion Gutwein, James Hudspeth, Adam Immerwahr, John Immerwahr, Stephen Immerwahr, Orion Johnstone, Pam Krayenbuhl, Sam Means, Wendy Seider, Teya Sepinuck, Jonathan Spies, and Charlie Max Ward.