In Our Image

The United States colonized the Philippines in 1898 after the Spanish-American War — a fact that appears in almost no American history curriculum. Karnow spent years reconstructing the full arc of American colonial rule: the Philippine-American War in which 200,000 Filipinos died, the Americanization of Philippine education and culture, the complex relationship between two countries that share a history neither fully acknowledges. The most important book about the US-Philippines relationship ever written. A visitor dispatch that is also an indictment — of American imperialism and American amnesia simultaneously.