Harvey Neptune's book is a stimulating and innovative account of the coming of an American base and its soldiers to an island still colonized by Britain. Neptune carefully interprets a wide range of sources, including newspapers and Trinidadian literature, and draws as well on cultural theory to show the profound effect the “Yankees” had on Trinidad, a society that had already been pushing for change since the turbulent labor discontent of the 1930s. This is a very important contribution to the history of the Caribbean in general and of Trinidad in particular, because the historiography of the region weighs heavily toward slavery and emancipation. While there have been general histories of individual nations, few histories have looked at one specific island during the 1940s and 1950s. It is also an important contribution to the literature on empires, as Trinidadians used American culture and U.S. dollars to contest the dominance of the British and their cultural imperialism. As the lower classes flocked to the bases in pursuit of the possibility of earning a higher wage, the Western-educated intellectuals were torn. The British, of course, were wary of another dominant power in its colonial empire. It is these complex debates that Neptune so impressively examines.

The introduction provides an overview of the chapters to follow, in which Neptune looks at the social and cultural impact of what he calls the “American occupation,” including, dress, music, gender and sexuality, definitions of manhood, and the effect on calypso. Chapter 1 examines the turbulent decade, the 1930s, that preceded the building of the base. Chapter 2 examines conflicting views on the United States; by the time base construction was underway, Trinidad had had forty years of dealing with American imperialism in a very ambivalent relationship. On the one hand, the United States offered a weapon against British imperialism and culture; on the other hand, having experienced British racism, Trinidadians were even more wary of American-style racism and lynching. The United States represented social injustice, but it also offered the powerful hope of economic development. This chapter also offers new material on the much-neglected area of American cinema in the Caribbean. Neptune examines the impact of Hollywood on Trinidadians since the first arrival of movies on the island in 1911. He uncovers what films were censored and why. There were also films with black casts that were particularly popular. The British, however, wanted to censor any representations of race that challenged the dominant racial ideology. British film censorship is an underresearched area of studies of colonialism and empire; thus, Neptune makes an important contribution to this area. He returns to the topic later, in his examination of male fashion in Trinidad.

Chapter 3 examines work on the U.S. bases. Local industry and planters, fearing a labor shortage as workers flocked to the base, tried to get the colonial government to set a prevailing wage. Eventually, as they had done in the past, the planters called for migrant labor rather than increasing the wages and improving the conditions of their workers. Working on the bases was not only lucrative for poor Trinidadians, but also offered a degree of “autonomy and adventure” (87). Because of the lack of sources from the point of view of Trinidadian workers, Neptune carefully integrates novels set in the era, such as Sam Sevlon's Brighter Sun and Ralph de Boissiere's Rum and Coca-Cola to give another interpretation of local responses to events under the occupation.

Chapter 4 is perhaps the most interesting as Neptune examines gender, class, and dress during the American “occupation” and the construction of a masculinity that defied the British colonial model “defined by humility, discipline and respectability” (106). With their hard-earned dollars, Trinidadian men invested in zoot suits, and later in the “jitterbug shirt,” taking on black American counterculture and a new style of assertiveness and making a distinctive Trinidadian style. The importance of dress as a form of rebellion and resistance is too often ignored by historians and is almost nonexistent in the scholarship on Trinidad. Neptune provides a fascinating account of the making of the “Saga boys,” a way of dress and behavior much derided by the British elite but impressive in African and Indian lower-class culture. The American presence also introduced to the society more casual, comfortable dress more appropriate for the local climate. Although following U.S. fashion can be interpreted as a rebellion against British rule, it also seemed to foreshadow a future “filled with the seductively colonizing commodities of American modernity” (128).

Chapter 5 examines the contested construction of Trinidad nationality as the U.S. soldiers embraced the calypso, affecting local attempts to promote calypso as national culture by causing concern among Trinidad intellectuals that Calypsonians were going to “sell out the island's cultural soul” (131) as they catered to their new consumers. Chapter 6 examines sexual relationships between U.S. servicemen and Trinidadian women. It is perhaps the weakest chapter in this excellent book, as it fails to fully explore the impact of these relationships on the women themselves. It is not clear if women were employed on the base, and it seems to be assumed that all women who provided domestic services for servicemen also performed sexual services. Many women dated and benefited from American servicemen's dollars, and most likely some prostituted themselves, but how much of this is assumed by a dominant gender ideology that tended to deride any attempt at female assertiveness and independence needs to be explored. (For further analysis of the gender system in Trinidad, see Victoria Pasley, “Gender, Race, and Class in Urban Trinidad: Representations in the Construction and Maintenance of the Gender Order, 1950–1980” [PhD diss., University of Houston, 1999].) Trinidadian women who interacted with U.S. servicemen were deeply resented by local men—as reflected, for example, in the calypsos of the time—so that most sources, including male-authored novels, would show this bias. That aside, this is very fine, carefully researched, innovative, and valuable contribution to the literature on Trinidad, on the Caribbean, and especially on the United States and the British colonial Caribbean.