Passages to America: Oral Histories of Child Immigrants from Ellis Island and Angel Island Book

Interesting revisionist history of the Spanish American war and WW1. Karp's basic thesis is that when faced with growing economic discontent and calls for reform, the two leading parties decided to pursue a global empire to quell popular dissent. However he does not do a great job explaining why exactly war was their go to solution, especially considering Karp depicts he mass of people as being quite isolationist, including the business elites.This incongruity comes from Karp's refusal to assign a direct economic motive for empire building; there is no talk or resources or markets in this book. In fact at one point he scoffs at the idea U.S. got involved in China for economic gain by stating that U.S. did not have major investments in China so that couldn't have been the reason! His refusal to see a direct economic motive where there clearly is comes from his own odd ideology.
Karp is a conservative, but one who takes the thought of the founding fathers seriously. One one hand this gives his book a strong moral perspective whereby U.S. politics in the post Civil war era is a mockery of what the founder's intentions were. On the other, this can make his criticisms of U.S. imperialism seem a little naive, as it could be argued U.S. had engaged in imperialism with the Mexican American war, not to mention westward expansion which saw the theft of Native American lands, all so the nation could stretch from coast to coast.
The writing in the book is good, and Karp's earnest moral disgust at the lies and corruption American politics is frankly exciting. It's nice to read an academic author who is honest and says what these people are doing is wrong, instead of going for some dry fake neutrality. this moralizing is serviced by a good analysis of of how these two parties got us into the Spanish American war and then World War I. Karp does a good job contrasting public statements against private actions. It can be darkly comic seeing the contortions politicians will put themselves into to carry on their war plans. Still, this type thorough analysis is not for everybody. There are probably 100 pages in this book devoted to the question of can neutral civilians sail on armed belligerent merchant ships in a hostile zone (the answer was no by the way). The book was overall very interesting and and little sad since there are many parallels between the gilded age and now.