IMPERIAL CRUISE

Whenever politics is discussed, you can usually count on someone to break out that old conspiracy theory that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance and allowed it to happen in order to get us out of the Depression. As difficult as it is to believe, Roosevelt probably was directly responsible for World War II. But not Franklin ... Theodore!

In his stunning new book, The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley paints an exquisitely detailed landscape of world politics at the beginning of the 20th century. President Theodore Roosevelt, not quite the same "Teddy" you might expect, sends the largest diplomatic delegation in U.S. history to the far east in 1905: seven senators and twenty-three congressmen accompany the president's twenty-one year old daughter, Alice - the Jackie Kennedy of her day - and the secretary of war (and future president) William Howard Taft to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and China. Taft, in direct violation of the Constitution, carried secret communications from the president to the emperor of Japan. It seems apparent that these agreements lit the slow burning fuse that exploded on December 7, 1941. This is an extraordinary book for anyone who needs to know the story behind the story.

James Bradley, by the way, is the son of John Bradley, one of the me who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, which prompted the book (and the movie), Flags of Our Fathers. Another WWII history - Flyboys - followed that. Bradley got to thinking about the causes of that war, and this book is the result. It is shocking, completely absorbing, and I recommend it without reservation.