One and one half ounces of dry gin. A half-ounce of dry vermouth. One dash of orange bitters. Shake over ice and serve in a martini glass straight up. The Dewey cocktail was one of the hottest drinks in 1898. Named for Commodore George Dewey, the naval hero of the battle of Manila Bay, it was a traditional martini with a symbolic twist. The orange bitters – made from Seville orange peels, cardamom, caraway, and coriander seeds – represented American victory over Spain and expansion into the exotic world of Asia. Far less symbolic celebrations, like naming consumer goods such as women's shoes, ovens, bathtubs, and bicycles after Dewey, also became commonplace. Parades, attractions, and exhibitions celebrated the war, as did everyday imagery in newspapers, magazines, and advertising.

Bonnie Miller presents a ripe historical investigation of visual culture produced before, during, and after the War of 1898 in From Liberation to Conquest. She explains how producers of media manufactured and represented popular attitudes toward the war. Her study is heavily reliant on print evidence from political cartoons, photography, and composite illustrations which make the narrative spring to life in the book. Decorated with over eighty such images, it successfully draws the reader into the world of 1898. Miller includes a tantalizing addition to her thesis: the role of audience in consuming media. It might be impossible for historians to comprehend the impact that visual media had on audiences because of the “scarcity of historical evidence of popular response,” but this does not preclude them from endeavoring to understand the reaction to media (3). With this in mind, Miller turns on its head the theory that the “yellow press” was the force of persuasion for war. The so-called “psychic crisis,” as Richard Hofstadter theorized, believed that sensational media was the cause of jingoism. Miller contends that the press only fed its audience what it desired already. Rather than “dictate public opinion,” the media only reflected part of a broader cultural network of marketable ideas (11).

This proposition is an interesting one which rests on the idea that the public did not trust sensationalist media sources like the New York World and New York Journal. Americans in 1898, Miller claims, saw these newspapers as overly dramatic tabloids produced by avaricious owners. Therefore they could not set the agenda. From this perspective, a reexamination of the motives for war can take place. The humanitarian crisis in Cuba – often claimed as a primary motive – may have captured attention in the yellow press, but Miller believes it only stirred some Americans. In chapter 2 she explains how the explosion of the Maine was far more influential, not on the grounds of newspapers alone, but because the spectacle of the disaster became adopted in a variety of visual cultures from plays to exhibitions (62–63).

Another contribution the book makes is to the imagery of gender and race. The feminine figure of “Cuba Libre,” the brawny caricature of Uncle Sam, and the topless women of Hawaii help illustrate an era obsessed with patriarchal patronage. Empire serviced such notions, exhibited well through these images. Racial images similarly changed as American perceptions of foreigners changed. Emilio Aguinaldo in early 1898 is white (199) when fighting alongside Americans. When war breaks out between Filipinos and Americans, Aguinaldo becomes distinctly Asian (201) or African (202). Miller's analysis of race, gender, and even age advances our knowledge of cultural perceptions around the war.

There is one place where Miller's investigation could go further. Why did some of these images persist in the public consciousness, and others not? The photos of the destroyed Maine, Frederick Remington's painting of the Rough Riders, and the images of Puerto Rico as a screaming baby coddled by Uncle Sam remain poignant portrayals and inspired later images of war and empire. The Dewey monument, the photos of starving American soldiers in Tampa, and the photos of sewage systems in Santiago shrank from people's memories. This question why some visual imagery persists might enhance the book's thesis about consumers as the drivers of media production.

A final thought: Miller's book lends itself well to the new multimedia “enhanced e-book” exemplified in Rick Perlstein's Nixonland. The print images may bring the story to life, but one can imagine the potential to make it sing and dance with videos of reenactments or theater productions and 3D virtual tours of artifacts. Miller has given us an excellent book with insightful analysis into culture from a variety of angles. Readers will be satisfied with the imagery, for now.