An adult and a child encounter each other on the streets of Manila near the end of World War II. (Germany was “a hideous, mud-colored brown.”) Take, by contrast, the following tidbit from the Northwestern University historian Daniel Immerwahr’s fascinating new book, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35). How might an imperial power see itself? In Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford recalls the geography lessons she and her sisters received in the 1920s from their formidable matriarch, known as Muv: “See, England and all our Empire possessions are a lovely pink on the map,” she would trill. Courtesy Farrar, Straus and Giroux/The Library of Congress Philippine Islands ten-peso silver certificate, 1903, from How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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