Established as America's first foreign naval base following the Spanish-American War, Guantanamo is now more often thought of as our Devil's Island, the gulag of our times. This book takes readers beyond the orange-jumpsuited detainees of today's headlines to provide the first comprehensive history of Guantanamo from its origins to the present.

Occupying 45 square miles of land and sea, Guantanamo has for more than a century symbolized the imperial impulse within U.S. foreign policy, and its occupation is decried by Cuba as a violation of international law--even though a treaty legally...