Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire
432 pages
English language
Published Jan. 23, 2022 by St. Martin's Press.
A groundbreaking journey tracing America’s forgotten path to global power―and how its legacies shape our world today―told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine.
Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, “The Fighting Quaker” went―serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his first days as a 16-year-old recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and helping invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war, imperialism, and big business, “I was a racketeer for capitalism."
Award-winning author Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled across the world―from China to Guantánamo, …
A groundbreaking journey tracing America’s forgotten path to global power―and how its legacies shape our world today―told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine.
Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, “The Fighting Quaker” went―serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his first days as a 16-year-old recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and helping invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war, imperialism, and big business, “I was a racketeer for capitalism."
Award-winning author Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled across the world―from China to Guantánamo, the mountains of Haiti to the Panama Canal―and pored over the personal letters of Butler, his fellow Marines, and his Quaker family on Philadelphia's Main Line. Along the way, Katz shows how the consequences of the Marines' actions are still very much talking politics with a Sandinista commander in Nicaragua, getting a martial arts lesson from a devotee of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and getting cast as a P.O.W. extra in a Filipino movie about their American War. Tracing a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time, Gangsters of Capitalism tells an urgent story about a formative era most Americans have never learned about, but that the rest of the world cannot forget.
I didn't really expect the more personal travelogue aspect but thought the stories, both personal and people meet, actually helps illuminated the imperialism of America and one of it's own coming to term with their own actions and believes.
This was a great approach to such a well-documented historical figure who has nevertheless fallen out of recognition, mixing his exploits with the author's journeys to each place in the modern day, and using the fascistic coup plots of the 30's that tried to rope him in as the narrative frame, closing with Reality Winner, January 6, and the Trumpist movement as examples of how much these times resemble those. Now I will go and read "War is a Racket," finally.
Highly recommend this book.
My dad was a marine, and took pride in that fact. I didn't know Much about Butler until I came across his "War is a Racket" speech. This book is a great biography.
It's not really about Butler, though. It's about the imperialism he fought for and then fought against. It's about how the US created a kitty of problems in the name of profit, and how we keep doing that.
an excellent complement to Daniel Immerwhar (who blurbed) how to hide an empire, another book on the making of american imperialism, this time told through the lens of Gen. Smedly Bulter (incredible name) and is turn towards antiwar activism. the travelogue sections of each chapter are not as good and in areas where I had significant knowledge really showed the ack of the authors dephth.
