• Image of American Empires: Power and Its Discontents

In this special issue of Guernica, we offer a few panels from this sprawling imperial mosaic—its victims and beneficiaries, the merciful and the mercenary. You won’t find these empires on a map, tucked as they are behind the names of can’t-say-I’ve-been-there towns. Be on the lookout instead for an office complex, someplace awash in the soothing hum of data centers and microwave transmitters. Their borders are the perimeter of the boardroom table, the cut of a sharp suit. If, that is, you decide they exist at all.