Writer James Bradley discusses his new book, *The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War*. It's the true story of a 1905 cruise arranged by President Teddy Roosevelt sending Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice, and a group of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There they would quietly forge a series of agreements that divided up Asia.
James Bradley is a writer of historical books. He was inspired as a boy when he read an article by former President Harry Truman recommending that young people read historical biographies. His father, John Bradley, helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima in WWII and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. James Bradley graduated with a degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For the next 20 years, he worked in the corporate communications industry in the US, Japan, England, and South Africa. He is working on a fourth book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and China.