[5] After his initial description and introduction of the SS Manchuria's voyage, the author explores brief excerpts of the history behind the period's American domestic and foreign policy, elaborating on its influence, motivation, and consequences, specifically in regard to American-Japanese, Sino-Japanese, and Russo-Japanese relations.

Writing for The New York Times Review of Books, Janet Maslin noted that "The Imperial Cruise is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency".

Bradley's book argues that it was the American delegation's seminal influence that both inspired Japanese imperialistic adventurism, including eventually and ironically, their attack on Pearl Harbor, and also continuing tensions between the United States and Asian nations.

[10] While Bradley argues that "The U.S. Army had brought the Aryan to the Pacific coast", USA Today cited his failure to explain how "in the 1930s, imperial Japan would act on the secret words of a man dead for more than a decade and out of office since 1909.

[12] Professor William N. Tilchin of Boston University attacks "Bradley's stupendously faulty analysis, The Imperial Cruise is a profoundly ignorant book even on the basic level of undisputed objective facts."