The authors reexamine the "Hero of San Juan Hill" to find that the heroic legend was manufactured, partly by Roosevelt himself, partly by the powerful newspaper correspondents he courted, and, perhaps surprisingly, supported by the Rough Riders themselves. That Roosevelt didn't mind risking their lives in his political ambition didn't seem to bother them overmuch - they were, after all, alive and victorious, and shared the prevailing military ethos of those innocent pre-Passchendaele days, when "glory" was counted as a real and achievable goal.
The story is well told here in this well-researched and readable work, with admirable maps by Texas A&M's own Cartographic Unit. Highly recommended for the general reader of military history and Roosevelt fans, as well as others who would like to see the birth of "spin".

The "score" rating is an unwelcome feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.

I was severely disappointed by Remembering the Maine. What struck me first and foremost about the book was its excessively vituperative tone. Peggy and Harold Samuels are not content to portray authors who disagree with them as wrong; they have to insult either their intelligence or motives. Thus we get the bizarre uncorroborated suggestion that the Rickover report was the product of a grudge against the Navy, plus numerous insults directed against many distinguished naval officers who analyzed the wreck of the Maine.

Furthermore, the Samuels systemmatically misrepresent the arguments of those authors who disagree with them. Having read other analyses of the explosion of the Maine, I found that the Samuels ignore the most telling and cogent arguments made in favor of an accidental explosion.

Having attempted to kneecap their intellectual opposites, the Samuels descend into the depths of absurdity by trotting out the obscure account of one Walter Mitty-ish figure, James Brice, who claimed in 1911 to have been told of a plot to destroy the Maine. They never explain why their unlikely Deep Throat kept silent long after the deaths of McKinley, Fitzhugh Lee or John Long, or why no corroborating evidence of Mr. Brice's claim has ever emerged from either Washington or Madrid - particularly when Mr. Brice claimed that Madrid knew of the plot and that he had told McKinley a week after the blast.

Clearly they were grasping at straws when writing the final chapter. Having written a needlessly vituperative hatchet job, they needed to forego the better, more cautious instincts of historians and write a conclusion that went for the jugular and theatrically unveiled the true culprit. Somewhere along the way, they forgot that they were historians.

The only fact truly revealed by their conclusion, however is that their book should not have been written at all.