Book Thoughts: How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

This book is focused on illuminating the U.S.'s empire across its history, going from what Immerwahr calls the Colonialist Empire to the Pointillist Empire. Basically, over time, the U.S. has decided it doesn't need to control much land because technology has improved to let them control things from a series of points, AKA our 800 military bases overseas. Puerto Rico might be more visible in the average American's knowledge now (one hopes), but what about how entangled the U.S. was in the Philippines, to the point that it was actually on the maps in the 1900s? What about the fact that Alaska and Hawai'i didn't become states until after WWII, and they were legitimately just seen as colonies? And all of the failed proposed states because the U.S. was too racist to consider letting in any territory that was majority people of color? And what about all the islands, a total of like 4 million people, that don't have any representation now, where basically the military gets to rule? Given…