Focusing our attention on 250 square miles in southeastern Cuba, Jonathan Hansen’s Guantánamo: An American History successfully argues for the outsized significance of this nearby patch of land. This is a place that is both exceptional — from its special geographic position to its unique legal status — and emblematic, particularly of the United States’ relationship to the world across three-plus centuries.

Hansen’s skills as an interdisciplinary scholar and storyteller are immediately apparent as he poses the compelling question of how Guantánamo’s past illuminates its present use as a highly controversial prison camp. To get at this, Hansen briefly describes the geological origins of Cuba and the bay itself, which was destined both for strategic importance and imperial contest. Christopher Columbus was one of many foreigners to follow trade winds and currents into Guantánamo Bay, impressed by its wide mouth and deep harbor when he arrived there in 1494. In...

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