Why read Empire's Workshop?

Book cover of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Making of an Imperial Republic

Book description

Examining over a century of US intervention in Latin America, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin reveals how the region has long served as a laboratory for US foreign policy, providing generations of Washington policy makers with an opportunity to rehearse a broad range of diplomatic and military tactics - tactics that…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Empire's Workshop as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Colin Mooers

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This updated edition of Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book charts the long history of the United States’ imperial domination of Latin America through gunboat diplomacy, invasion, hard and soft coups, mercenary wars, and covert actions.

Often considered its ‘backyard,’ Latin America is where the United States “learned how to project its power, worked out effective and flexible tactics of extraterritorial administration, established legal precedents, and acquired its conception of itself as an empire like no other before it.” Grandin illustrates this history with numerous historical and contemporary examples, including the 1973 US-supported coup in Chile, which brought to power Augusto Pinochet’s…

From Colin's list on The best recent reader-friendly books on imperialism and colonialism.