Recent Books
210 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
The Caribbean Policy of the Ulysses S.
Grant Administration: Foreshadowing an
Informal Empire
BY STEPHEN MCCULLOUGH.
Lexington Books, 2017, 230 pp.After the Civil War, the United States
embraced its “manifest destiny” to
expand not only westward to the PaciÄc
Ocean but also southward into the
Caribbean. U.S. leaders actively
considered the annexation o Cuba and
the Dominican Republic, spurred by the
lobbying o wealthy pro-annexation
elites from both nations, who found a
ready audience in corrupt, Gilded Age
Washington. The case for annexation fell
apart after wrangling between Congress
and the Grant administration; however,
a consensus emerged in Washington that
the United States should replace Spain
and the United Kingdom as the domi-
nant foreign power in the Caribbean and
that it was necessary to set up naval
bases and coaling stations across the
basin to protect an eventual transoceanic
canal in Central America. U.S. ocials
diered on how to achieve these goals.
Some argued for direct military inter-
vention; others preached patience in
allowing U.S. commercial power to
organically secure greater inÁuence in the
Caribbean. These opposing visions o
how the United States should project its
power in the world still lie at the heart
o foreign policy debates today.Rojo
DIRECTED BY BENJAMIN
NAISHTAT. Bord Cadre Films, 2018.This thoughtful, disturbing melodrama
is set in a nondescript provincial town
in Argentina in 1975. The Älm’s actionthe Aztecs. Other histories have also
shown how the Spanish conquistador
Hernán Cortés skillfully exploited
divisions among the indigenous tribes,
who aligned with the Spanish often out
o spite for the Aztecs. But Townsend’s
book is still a landmark masterpiece,
powerful in its precision and subtle in its
weaving o tragedy and glory.
Lost Children Archive: A Novel
BY VALERIA LUISELLI. Knopf, 2019,
400 pp.
The daring Äction and nonÄction o
Luiselli, a New York–based, Mexican-born
writer, combine literary brilliance, empa-
thetic politics, and a dazzling imagination.
She has the intellectual Ärepower to be
her generation’s Susan Sontag (whose
interest in collection, documentation, and
memory Luiselli references) but possesses
an even wider, more global sensibility. In
her novel Lost Children Archive, Luiselli
conjures a couple with two young chil-
dren, aged ten and Äve, on a long road
trip from New York to the southwestern
United States in search o the grave o the
Apache leader Geronimo. The novel’s
“lost children” include the last Apaches as
well as today’s desperate young migrants
from Central America. Eventually (spoiler
alert), the couple’s two children go
missing. Luiselli envisions the Southwest
as desolate and haunted by genocide, a
xenophobic wasteland occupied by a
brutal border patrol. The loving interplay
between the two children lightens the
brooding atmosphere. Miraculously, the
children never quarrel during long hours
o driving, instead amusing themselves
with songs, word games, and fantasies. In
Luiselli’s deft hands, children are our
shame and our redemption.