The United States has been nation building for a century. This fine book considers the first US effort to build a nation by military means, in the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. Published during the centennial year of the invasion that began that effort, the study shows that nation building did not work because arrogance, cultural ignorance, racism, and violence betrayed its idealistic goals and spurred resistance. If this sounds familiar, it is because “the parallels and implications for other US military occupations and the idea of exporting democracy are impossible to miss” (p. 205).The book contributes to military and Latin American history, foreign relations, and the literature on nation building; scholars of these fields will welcome it. So will students, because it is a gripping tale, rich in detail. The author mined many sources in the United States (especially the Marine Corps archive in Quantico) and the Dominican Republic (particularly the Archivo General de la Nación) to assemble this accessible account of an important but understudied event. It complements the work of Bruce Calder and Alan McPherson.The thesis emerges in a concise exposition of nineteenth-century Dominican society, economy, and militarization demonstrating that “struggles between regionalism and centralization consumed politics” (p. 26). Local caudillos spearheaded regionalism, identified with tradition; US interests controlled centralization, which “came to represent foreign imposition and loss of sovereignty” (p. 26). This tension continued into the twentieth century, shaping the occupation. The book documents the years prior to the occupation, when US military muscle, applied by naval officers, propped up an unpopular Dominican president and took over Dominican ports and customhouses. Expanding their mission without mandate, the marines extended operations to the border with “Custom House Guards for the Haitian Frontier” (p. 42). This intervention exacerbated the struggle between regional autonomy and centralized control, with local caudillos backing the former and elites pushing the latter in the name of modernization. Centralization prevailed during the stable government of Ramón Cáceres, but after his assassination in 1911 civil war resumed, and regional forces regained the upper hand. The violence between Dominicans and US forces in the country was more a proto-occupation than previously understood. Tillman's page-turning account of the period leading up to the invasion convincingly explains how and why it happened.Established in April 1917, the Guardia Nacional Dominicana was planned as a peacekeeping “constabulary” but quickly “became a central component in both occupation plans and Dominican protest” (p. 102). The marines purged veterans of the old Dominican army from the new guard, which denied it the credibility of respected Dominican officers, who were effective recruiters. After their dismissal, many of the soldiers loyal to them deserted to join the guerrilla resistance. Others deserted because World War I reduced resources, leaving them unclothed, unfed, and unpaid. The remaining soldiers were the “scum of the Island,” wrote a marine (p. 97). The constabulary was popularly perceived as a proxy for the invaders, more likely to rob and abuse the civilians than to bring order. Its marine officers were worse, stealing horses, torturing and murdering citizens, and burning villages. Unsurprisingly, “the new constabulary fast became an axis around which occupation failures revolved” (p. 102).The centralizing intentions of the occupation government met resistance at the regional level. Like previous Dominican governments, the marines faced the same obstacles to controlling a mountainous country with volatile weather and few roads. Isolated constabulary units negotiated with residents to make their jobs easier, opting not to enforce marine-mandated laws, such as press censorship, confiscation of guns and machetes, and bans on gambling and cockfighting, that insulted local traditions and intensified resentment. In 1920, Dominican resistance expanded from the regional to the national and international levels. The national resistance movement connected across the landscape using the roads that the marines had built. Distinguished Dominicans abroad publicized the occupation's brutality and illegality. Responding to pressure from Washington, the constabulary also centralized operations. By 1922, the consolidation of both the national resistance and the constabulary led to “a drastic polarization of society between the military and the majority of Dominican society” (p. 167).A debate about the terms of the marines' departure split the Dominican nationalist movement, between those wanting a pure and simple end to the occupation without conditions and a coalition in favor of compromising with US demands, which prevailed. When the occupation installed a Dominican interim president and appointed a Dominican military hero as constabulary commander, the force gained respectability and recruitment soared. When the last marines left in July 1924, the new Dominican military, which had been “widely hated, the butt of jokes and a symbol of treason,” was “firmly entrenched and supported by the constitutionally elected government” (p. 169). Tragically, the man in the best position to take control of the force was Rafael Trujillo, who made himself dictator on its khaki back and stayed there for three decades.