And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.
Sometimes in America, there is a desperate need for war, an atavistic desire for violence. In the 1890's there was clearly this need. Teddy Roosevelt lead the charge. He was certainly ready to go to war against Spain, but according to his letters, any nation would do. He felt the need to use war to cope with much larger changes and reaffirm to a fearful nation that it was not going soft. Sound familiar? Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas, in this new book The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898, spent years researching what happened in the 1890's and what lessons we might learn today.My conversation with Evan Thomas:
