This book (actually it's a three volume series of books) is kinda like if Captain America, Rambo, and the Rock all got together and made a baby. An amazingly buff and manly baby that could snap your neck with two fingers.

The Winning of the West was ultimately Roosevelt's love letter to the American pioneers and Westward expansionism. In it, he traced the history of those settlers that increasingly pushed the border of the United States westward and even more westward until there was no more land left. He thought that these were the manliest men of all time and that we should all be more like them.

You might be asking yourself, what does this have to do with William Jennings Bryan's "Imperialism" speech? Roosevelt's writings were hyper-masculine. They were violent. They were borderline racist. And they supported American imperialism in the form of westward expansion.

Roosevelt was definitely aware that manliness and imperialism went together like PB and J back in the 19th century. And he loved it.

But Bryan totally didn't. Bryan was trying to push against this form of American masculinity. He wanted them to be more compassionate. More Christian. Less violent. And less warlike.

(We still think it would be cool if Captain America, Rambo, and the Rock had a baby, though.)