The War with Spain in 1898

"The book's virtues are many: the author's often persuasive judgments, the scrupulous care with which he treats sources, the illuminating integration of American, Spanish, Cuban, and Filipino perspectives. . . . This is, in sum, a work that will long remain the major reference volume on the war of 1898".-American Historical Review. "[Trask] examines many of the political and geographical ramifications so often overlooked in popular histories. This is all deftly presented and the battle scenes are exciting".-Library Journal. "Remember the Maine!" The war cry spread throughout the United States after the American battleship was blown up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. Americans, already sympathetic with Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain, demanded action. Brief and decisive, not too costly, the Spanish-American War made the United States a world power. David F. Trask's War with Spain in 1898 is a cogent political and military history of that "splendid little war". It describes the failure of diplomacy; the state of preparedness of both sides; the battles, including those of Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders; the enlargement of conflict to rout the Spanish from Puerto Rico and the Philippines; and the misconceptions surrounding the war. Chief historian at the U.S. Army Center for Military History, David F. Trask is also the author of The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918.