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

by Daniel Immerwahr

The chief argument of this book is that we should think of the United States differently. Rather than conceiving of it as a contiguous blob, we should take seriously its overseas holdings, from large colonies to tiny islands. For that reason, I use the United States to refer to the entire polity. The contiguous portion I call the mainland, which is what many in the territories call it.