Public Scholarship

This narrative essay tells the story of U. S. soldiers’ use of water torture during the Philippine-American War, its exposure by American anti-colonialist critics, and the ensuing 1902 Senate investigation and public debate over the legitimacy of the “water cure” and U. S. colonial warfare more generally.

These brief memos, written for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, discuss the writing of “Desert, Storm,” which the Center supported.  They provide an overview of the essay, review the research process, and discusses reasons why the story may have remained largely unknown until now.