'First Great Triumph'

By Robert Siegel

Published October 30, 2002 at 12:00 AM EST

Robert Siegel talks with Warren Zimmerman, author of First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. Warren Zimmerman was the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1989-1992. He talks about how five friends -- President Theodore Roosevelt, naval strategist Alfred T. Mahan, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Secretary of State John Hay and corporate lawyer-turned-colonial administrator Elihu Root -- created a new U.S. foreign policy of political expansionism overseas. (7:30) The book is published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, September 2002.

Robert Siegel

Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.

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