Americans gone rogue, as Prentice puts it, have long been a part of the Philippines’ landscape, but Truman Hunt, an inveterate liar, a bigamist and a slave driver, seems nearly unparalleled as far as scoundrels go. In some sense, this slick-talking charlatan becomes a stand-in for America itself, or a certain version of America in its more opportun

I do not believe that there is any people on earth freer than they, and less able to allow the subjection of their wills to any power whatever – so much so that Fathers here have no control over their children, or Captains over their subjects, or the Laws of the country over any of them, except in so far as each is pleased to submit to them. There

White people would sometimes “go native,” but native people almost never “went white.” For Junger, this suggests that there was something fundamentally humane about native culture, or something inhumane about white culture. In general, tribal living was more coherent, more egalitarian, and more relaxed than the rigid, hierarchical culture of white

Coney Island was made of tall tales. The birthplace of the hot dog and the roller coaster, it was the poor man’s paradise, offering sensation for a nickel. By the early twentieth century, it was America’s most popular sea-side resort.