How to Hide an Empire tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States, revealing forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. It leads us to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century's most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would eventually shoot up the U.S. Congress.

As Daniel Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism after World War II, instead putting innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use as it devised a new sphere of influence that did not require the control of space. Rich with absorbing vignettes and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a groundbreaking and compulsively readable work of history.

• For readers of Steve Luxenberg and Adam Higginbotham