Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Module Bibliography

Below is a list of books and essays entirely or partly on the subject of US imperialism. Some are historical or literary studies, and some concern contemporary American foreign policy. This is intended as a partial guide, of course, and is only a starting point for your own research; the literature on this subject is vast.

Anderson, Perry. 'Imperium'. New Left Review, 83 (Oct 2013)

Bacevich, Andrew. American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (Harvard, 2004)

Brody, David. Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines (Chicago, 2010)

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (Holt, Rhinehart and Wilson, 1970)

Cheyfitz, Eric. The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan (UPenn, 1997)

Dawson, Ashley and Malini Johar Schueller (eds). Exceptional State: Contemporary US Culture and the New Imperialism (Duke, 2007)

Doolen, Andy. Fugitive Empire: Locating Early American Imperialism (Minnesota, 2005)

Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building (Oklahoma, 1980)

Gillman, Susan. 'The New, Newest Thing'. American Literary History. 17.1 (2005).

Goldstein, Alyosha, ed. Formations of United States Colonialism (Duke, 2014)

Gruesser, John Cullen. The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home: African American Literature and the Era of Overseas Expansion (Georgia, 2012)

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire (Harvard, 2000)

Harvey, David. The New Imperialism (Verso, 2005)

Immerman, Richard. Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (Princeton, 2010)

Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (Holt, 2004)

---. The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2004)

---. Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2008)

Kaplan, Amy. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of US Culture (Harvard, 2005)

---. 'Imperial Melancholy in America'. Raritan, 28.3 (Jan 2009)

Kaplan, Amy and Donald Pease, ed. Cultures of United States Imperialism (Duke, 1993)

Kramer, Paul A. 'Power and Connection'. American Historical Review. 116.5 (Dec 2011)

LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1963)

Levine, Robert S. Dislocating Race and Nation (North Carolina, 2008)

McCoy, Alfred and Francisco Scarano, ed. Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State (Wisconsin, 2009)

McClintock, Anne. 'Imperial Ghosting and National Tragedy'. PMLA (Oct 2014)

Murphy, Gretchen. Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of US Empire (2005)

---. Shadowing the White Man's Burden: US Imperialism and the Problem of the Color Line (2010)

Rowe, John Carlos. Literary Culture and US Imperialism (OUP, 2000)

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism (Knopf, 1993)

Sexton, Jay and Ian Tyrrell, eds., Empire's Twin: US Anti-Imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism (Cornell, 2015)

Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny (Hill and Wang, 1996)

Tyrell, Ian. Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (Princeton, 2010)

Westling, Meg. Empire's Proxy: American Literature and US Imperialism in the Philippines (NYU, 2011)

Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1959)