Remember the Maine: The Spanish-American War Begins (First Battles)

Grade 5 Up-An American icon is destroyed in a violent surprise attack, and public outrage fueled by the media plunges the United States into war. The setting of this timely and ironically parallel story is not New York in 2001 but Cuba in 1898, when the U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor and sparked the Spanish-American War. McNeese explains the implications of the tragedy by tracing the centuries-long struggle between Cuban rebels and the oppressive government of Spain. American businesses were also anxious to protect their investments in Cuba. When newspaper magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst published sensational and often fabricated reports of atrocities committed against the Cubans, American animosity toward Spain intensified, ultimately prompting President McKinley to dispatch the Maine as a visible warning that America might intervene on the side of the rebels. Within a month, however, the ship was destroyed, its attackers and their methods of sabotage still unknown. Black-and-white photos and engravings-inconsistent in quality and often too small to be effective-illustrate the principal players in this highly political drama. McNeese's journalistic prose is occasionally awkward, but his research is thorough, assembling a seamless chronicle from eyewitness accounts, letters from the Maine's crew, and newspaper articles of the day. Since the brevity of this war often relegates it to just a few paragraphs in textbooks, this title offers valuable and expanded commentary on the event that not only precipitated the war but also set precedents for the role of the media in presidential decision making and the role of the United States in foreign conflicts.
William McLoughlin, Brookside School, Worthington, OH
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.