Edward Said spent much of his distinguished career combatting Western stereotypes of the Arab world. Laura Nader explains what Said meant by "Orientalism," and describes what Arabs who visited the West in past centuries came to think of Western practices. Also, Adel Iskandar talks about the volume in which Laura Nader's article about Said appears.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the US engineered its conquest of the Philippines. According to Alfred McCoy, the security and surveillance methods introduced and refined by the US in the Philippines were brought home to these shores, for use in domestic policing, intelligence, and other repressive techniques and systems that had profound consequences for civil liberties.

What do language and the act of translation have to do with the projection of imperial and military power? Vicente Rafael makes important connections and points to efforts to Americanize the English language in this nation's early years. He also discusses the politics of monolingualism, the notion of the melting pot, and the US military's use of interpreters in Iraq.

What do a coup in Honduras and a redwood log cross section put on display for park visitors have in common? Dana Frank comments on the recent military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, the repression and resistance that followed, and the US response. She also explains how date markers on tree slices connect to themes of empire, conquest and domination.

Empire isn't just enacted abroad. It also affects, in profound ways, people living in the imperial metropole. In the volume Colonial Crucible, Natalie Ring reveals that domestic attitudes toward the US South were influenced by imperialist adventures in tropical locales, and Kristin Hoganson describes how turn-of-the-twentieth-century US consumers "bought into empire."

Why does the US torture people who it knows have no actionable intelligence? What does paranoia have to do with torture conducted at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? What has the commentary surrounding the Abu Ghraib photographs crucially ignored? Anne McClintock weighs in on these and other matters.