The War Lovers (2010)

What can Theodore Roosevelt teach us about President George W. Bush and the post-9/11 thirst for war? Plenty, says Evan Thomas in The War Lovers, this finely crafted book about the Gilded Age, when America's desire for empire building fueled the Spanish-American War. The parallels to Iraq are unmistakable: After the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, Americans were told that Spain's "secret infernal machine," or weapons of mass destruction, was responsible. Thomas explains why we as a nation are so hawkish — why ''the eternal pull of war on men,'' as he calls it, rules us to this day. A

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