Will I love Fighting for American Manhood?

What makes this book so exceptional and ground-breaking decades after its publication is embedded in the subtitle: Kristin Hoganson argues that gender politics “provoked” the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, through which the United States acquired most of its overseas colonies.

Hoganson connects domestic and foreign policy, analyzing correspondence, political speeches, and newspaper articles. When jingoes – people we would know now call hawks – depicted Cuba as a beautiful damsel in distress or accused the war-averse president McKinley of having “no more backbone than a chocolate eclair,” they were counting on associations of manhood with militarism. Ultimately, they were successful… show more.

This look at the Spanish-American War is a far cry from the way Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders were glorified in my grade school education. Historian Kristin Hoganson demonstrates that gender politics was a driving force pushing the U.S. into war with Spain in 1898. Whereas elder statesmen believed that “restraint and sober judgment” were the essence of manhood, they lost out to hawkish leaders such as Roosevelt, who claimed that American men had grown too weak for their own and the nation’s good and needed a war to regain their strength. The quick trouncing of Spain in Cuba… show more.