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

by Daniel Immerwahr

It suggests that the United States is a politically uniform space: a union, voluntarily entered into, of states standing on equal footing with one another. But that’s not true, and it’s never been true. From the day the treaty securing independence from Britain was ratified, right up to the present, it’s been a collection of states and territories. It’s been a partitioned country, divided into two sections, with different laws applying in each.