Advance Reading Copy: Splendid Liberators by Joe Jackson (Paperback 2025)

An Advanced Reading Copy.\nThis immersive epic reveals the origins of the American empire and the lives of those who promoted it and those who resisted it. In 1898, the United States won an empire, and\u2014many allege\u2014lost its soul. In Splendid Liberators, Joe Jackson offers an epic narrative of the Spanish-American War, the world-spanning conflict during which the United States freed Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spanish control only to confront resistance and resentment. The acclaimed author of Black Elk, Jackson brings the times to full, teeming life via portraits of the many leading characters\u2014from the impetuous warrior Teddy Roosevelt, the prophetic Cuban revolutionary Jos\u00E9 Mart\u00ED, and the Philippines\u2019 dignified first president, Emilio Aguinaldo, to the Red Cross\u2019s Clara Barton and the foe of empire Mark Twain. He ranges from the heroic theatres of San Juan Hill and Manila Bay to disease-wracked camps in Florida and Cuba where soldiers.