In 1898 the yellow press of the United States clamored for war. On President McKinley's desk lay a newspaper with the headline, "300 Cuban Women Butchered!!!" From Cuba came such distressing reports about Spanish cruelty and corruption that the President and other cool heads found it difficult to evaluate the situation. But when the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor, the newspapers had a rallying call: "Remember the Maine!" and at last, ill-prepared but enthusiastic, the United States declared war on Spain.

One of the least known and least understood conflicts, the Spanish-American War brought into prominence Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, Admiral Dewey, Major Walter Reed, and other colorful personalities. It pointed our the military need for a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and hastened an investigation into the cause of yellow fever. Basing much of his material on a previously suppressed Army report, Colonel Reeder brings to light new facts about the background of the war, and presents a vivid panorama of the fervor and chaos in Cuba, the Philippines, and the United States during that stirring time.

From the dust jacket