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Cargando... Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empirepor Jonathan M. Katz
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  1Randal | Dec 7, 2021 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"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 empire: 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, declaring: "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 alive: 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"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)973.91History and Geography North America United States 1901- Roosevelt Through Truman AdministrationsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (4.19)
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Katz opened my eyes to a different perspective. That of the U.S. as an imperialistic force, out to further the advances of big businesses and the rich.
He does this through the eyes of a famous U.S. Marine, Smedley Butler. Raised as a Quaker, he somehow finds himself enlisted in the Marine Corps. And on to his adventures! Beginning as a tough, literally take no prisoners hellhound, he is sent to the Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, China, and Panama. As he "grows", he discovers that the reasons are not just to promote the freedom-loving ways of the U.S., but to benefit the rich. He grows more and more disillusioned to the fighting and killing. Finally retiring, he finds himself being recruited into a plot to overthrow the Federal Government. To which, to his great credit, he exposes.
On a personal level, I really enjoyed the sections on China. My grandfather was in the Navy there at the same time, and now I think I have a feeling about what we went through, and why he would never talk about it. Also, regarding the ending, with the plot to overthrow the government; I could not help but draw parallels with the machinations of the Trump administration after the 2020 election (and continuing to today).
This is a long, and sometimes tiring book. But it is never boring. I really think that if you read it, you will come away with a much greater sense of our place in history. And why we have some of the problems we have today. And why some nations do not trust us.
Very educational! (