The truths out there

Critics of American foreign policy have long accused the country of imperialism in a general sense

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Daniel Immerwahr

Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 516 pages; $30

The word “empire” has a distinct place in the American lexicon: readily applicable to other countries but rarely, if ever, to the United States itself.
 

Even in the spring of 2003, when American forces were occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and government officials were writing torture memos, the defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed almost offended when a reporter asked whether the United States was engaged in anything like “empire-building.” “We’re not imperialistic,” Rumsfeld insisted. “We never have been. I can’t imagine