In Our Image

Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History, has now written an enthralling account of an almost forgotten subject: America's imperial experience in the Philippines. Panoramic in scope, profound in its perceptions and compassionate in its human portraits, In Our Image is an exciting, heroic, tragic, colorful and often comic narrative drawn from many hitherto unpublished documents as well as hundreds of interviews with American and Filipino participants. Above all, its brilliant description and analysis of this important chapter in American history holds lessons for the present and future. No other book on the subject is as comprehensive.

The United States was vaulted into the Philippines during the Spanish-American War of 1898. It was America's first war beyond its continental limits, and it transformed the United States into a global power. America conquered the Filipino nationalists in a cruel conflict and then, infused with missionary zeal, sought to remake the Philippines "in our image" — complete with American political, educational and cultural institutions. The American imprint remains but, as Stanley Karnow vividly illustrates, it has barely altered traditional Filipino vales. Nevertheless, the two countries still maintain a "special relationship," and a key question is whether that commitment will deepen as the Philippine economy flounders and its already critical Communist threat spreads.

This is history told through a rich cast of characters: the indecisive President William McKinley and his aggressive aide Theodore Roosevelt; William Howard Taft, the portly American governor who patronized the Filipinos as "little brown brothers"; the mercurial Philippine President Manuel Quezon and the imperious General Douglas MacArthur; the egregiously corrupt Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos; and Benigno and Corazon Aquino, martyr and madonna. The pages throng with other memorable figures: CIA agents, Communist insurgents, priests, politicians, peasants, thugs, whores. Written by a journalist, In Our Image is fast paced, readable and credible; it is destined to become a classic.