Reference Reviews

Lawrence Looks at Books

Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by Spencer C. Tucker, James Arnold and Roberta Werner. 3 vols. 1,008p. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009. 978-1-85109-951-1; 2009-12422. $295.

Spencer Tucker has a long track record of producing excellent encyclopedias of military history with detailed examinations of causes of conflict, strategic planning, battle tactics and biographies of civilian leaders and military commanders. Tucker has now applied his award-winning methods to two wars in which the United States established an imperial role in the Caribbean and the Pacific. These historic conflicts hold sobering parallels to current American efforts overseas. In both instances American forces won overwhelming victories in dispatching the ruling regimes, but faced long, bloody resistance from the local populace. News of atrocities committed by American soldiers soured public support for such international involvements, yet the United States found it difficult to withdraw for fear that other powerful interests would try to dominate the region. Perhaps most alarming are the long-term commitments these conflicts entailed: more than fifty years for both the Philippines and Cuba, double that time for Guam and Puerto Rico. Under Tucker’s leadership, a team of scholarly experts explores both the immediate and long-term impact of the wars in Caribbean and the Philippines. As usual, they examine military and diplomatic issues in great detail. In addition, much attention also is given to the social and political background to the conflict. Thus, many of the 620 entries explore the development of railroads, film, political cartoons and the typewriter as well as the Gatling gun, naval strategies and the Cuban campaign. The selection of 153 primary documents in volume three includes the demands of the Pullman strikers and William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech as well as official military reports and Mark Twain’s condemnation of the Moro Massacre. The result is an excellent period guide that provides great detail on military events while placing them in a larger historic context, particularly Gilded Age and the Progressive Era in the United States. This scholarly encyclopedia is highly recommended for high school, public and academic libraries.