Ann Laura Stoler has gathered this materially disparate but conceptually linked collection of essays from academics in disciplines ranging from anthropology, to women's studies, to comparative literature, to history. Chapters focus upon matters such as “half-castes” in Samoa, hygiene – bodily and social – amongst lepers in the Philippines and the native population in Australia, ambivalent attitudes to slaves in Louisiana, transnational adoption, prostitution in Manila, the interface between Native Americans and colonizers, and the influence of psychometric testing. Using “geographies of intimacy” that focus principally on “domestic space, schooling and public hygiene,” Stoler – and her contributors – seek recognition of the United States as a far more coherent imperial power than is often supposed.

History from below is far from new, but to use it in the fashion that Stoler and her contributors do here, to reflect upon the common ground between United States history and postcolonial studies, sets a fascinating precedent. Traceable through these essays is the “elusive, nontransparent power” that governs the life of individuals subject to colonization of body and mind. Governance is scrutinized through the microphysics of daily life. Here imperial power is rendered tangible in the lived realities of the people upon whom it focuses.

Stoler's concern with the “tender” elements of the ties between colonized and colonizer offers a far more nuanced picture of the relationship, yet simultaneously exposes the ways in which United States colonial power operated at levels below that of broad policy and the requirements of capitalist modernity. The process serves also to remind us that these relationships still exist and that we must strive to recognize them in their contemporary forms. Indeed this is the area in which the absence of at least one essay on what Stoler herself regards as the ghostly presences of Abu Graib or Guantánamo Bay – symptoms of the broader refiguring of “intimacies” since 11 September 2001 – seems unfortunate.

The “intimacy” of these phenomena might, at the very least, remind the reader that the intertwined concerns of colonialism, postcolonialism, empire, and the history of the United States are absolutely contemporary. Stoler does in fact acknowledge that these are areas into which she has not ventured, but irrespective of this – and Nancy Cott's remark in the afterword that many contributors “sidle away” from engagement with the notion of “empires” – this is a useful and highly readable collection that contains much valuable material that will be useful to scholars across the disciplines.