Social darwinism in the gilded and progressive ages

I just finished reading (or, more correctly, listening to, as my commute provides ample time for audio books) an interesting book by Evan Thomas, "The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898". There is a lot of intriguing stuff in here, and the gilded and progressive ages in America were fascinating times for a number of reasons, but what struck me, as an anthropologist, was the  pervasive role that social Darwinism played in American foreign and domestic policy (as exemplified by Theodore Roosevelt, senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst). The idea that superior groups (however that is defined) were meant to out-compete inferior groups in the "struggle for existence" served to justify much of America's expansionist and imperialist policies towards Spain and the populations then under their rule (Black Cubans and Filipinos).

CNN has a wonderful service called BookTV, where you can watch authors give talks on their books. I haven't seen Thomas's clip yet, but you can find his talk here, a book discussion here, and a nice review of the book here.

UPDATE 3.23.13

I just watched Thomas's BookTV segment. He summed up the book (as they always do...this is actually a good way to figure out if the book will interest you), and then took some questions from the audience. The most interesting question probably dealt with parallels between the war fever of 1898 and that of 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq. Thomas himself was a Hawk in 2003, and he discussed how attitudes have changed, just as they have for the 1898 conflicts.