HIST-152 U.S. History 1877-Present

Description: World War I immediately evokes images of the trenches: grinding, halting battles that sacrificed millions of lives for no territory or visible gain. Yet the first months of the war, from the German invasion of Belgium to the Marne to Ypres, were utterly different, full of advances and retreats, tactical maneuvering, and significant gains and losses. Max Hastings recreates this dramatic year, from the diplomatic crisis to the fighting in Belgium and France on the Western front, and Serbia and Galicia to the east. He gives vivid accounts of the battles and frank assessments of generals and political leaders, and shows why it was inevitable that this first war among modern industrial nations could not produce a decisive victory, making a war of attrition inevitable. Throughout we encounter high officials and average soldiers, as well as civilians on the homefront, giving us a vivid portrait of how a continent became embroiled in a war that would change everything. (publ.)

Description: On a summer morning in Sarajevo, a teenager took a pistol out of his pocket and fired not just the opening rounds of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history. By killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gavrilo Princip started a cycle of events that would leave 15 million dead from fighting between 1914 and 1918 and proved fatal for empires and a way of ruling that had held for centuries. (publ.)

Description: The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the first years of the twentieth century, Europe believed it was marching to a golden, happy, and prosperous future. But instead, complex personalities and rivalries, colonialism and ethnic nationalisms, and shifting alliances helped to bring about the failure of the long peace and the outbreak of a war that transformed Europe and the world. This work brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, bankers, and the extended, interrelated family of crowned heads across Europe who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff, Von Moltke the Younger; in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea. There are the would-be peacemakers as well, among them prophets of the horrors of future wars whose warnings went unheeded: Alfred Nobel, who donated his fortune to the cause of international understanding, and Bertha von Suttner, a writer and activist who was the first woman awarded Nobel's new Peace Prize. Here too we meet the urbane and cosmopolitan Count Harry Kessler, who noticed many of the early signs that something was stirring in Europe; the young Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and a rising figure in British politics; Madame Caillaux, who shot a man who might have been a force for peace; and more. (publ.)

Description: As World War I dragged on into 1915, German armies along the Western Front settled into stalemate with entrenched British and French forces. But in the East the picture was quite different. The Kaiser's army routed the Russians, took possession of Polish territory, and attempted to create a Polish satellite state. Elusive Alliance delves into Germany's three-year occupation of Poland and explains why its ambitious attempt at nation-building failed. Dubbed the Imperial Government-General of Warsaw, Germany's occupation regime was headed by veteran Prussian commander Hans Hartwig von Beseler. In his vision for Central Europe, Poland would become Germany's permanent ally, culturally and politically autonomous but bound to the Fatherland in foreign policy matters. To win Polish support, Beseler spearheaded the creation of new institutions including a Polish-language university in Warsaw, reformed the school system, and established democratically elected municipal governments. For Beseler and other German strategists, a secure Poland was essential to ensuring Central Europe against a threatening tide of nationalism and revolution. But as Jesse Kauffman shows, Beseler underestimated the resistance to his policies and the growing hostility to occupation as Germany plundered Polish resources to fuel its war effort. By 1918, with the war over, Poles achieved independence. Yet it would not be long before they faced a second, far more brutal German occupation at the hands of the Nazis. (publ.)

Description: Much of the writing on the war has hallowed the tactical and operational effectiveness of the German army. Yet Germany lost the conflict. In tackling this paradox, Herwig shows how greatly the Central Powers suffered from inadequate resources and an incapacity to manage effectively what they had. He also shows with clarity just how much of Germany's effort was expended in sustaining not only its own war effort but also that of its ally, without any corresponding subordination of Vienna to Berlin, as the economic and military realities required. But it is in his reassessment of Germany's military effectiveness that he offers the most fundamental corrective. For readers accustomed to criticisms of the various Allied commanders, Herwig's examination of the German military effort will have uncanny echoes. Even the famous German offensives of March 1918, regarded as a model of breakthrough operations by interwar theorists, are condemned not just for their lack of strategic objective but even for their tactical failings. (publ.)

Description: On 7 May 1915, the Lusitania, a large British luxury liner, was sunk by a German submarine off the Irish coast. Nearly 1,200 people, including 128 American citizens, lost their lives. The sinking of a civilian passenger vessel without warning was a scandal of international scale and helped precipitate the United States' decision to enter the conflict. It also led to the immediate vilification of Germany. Though the ship's sinking has preoccupied historians and the general public for over a century, the German side of the story has remained largely untold until now. ... Willi Jasper provides provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the sinking and its aftermath, focusing on the German reaction and psyche. The attack on the Lusitania, he argues was not simply an escalation of violence but the signalling of a new ideological, moral and religious dimension in the struggle between German "Kultur" and Western civilization. (publ)
Note: Originally published as: Lusitania: Kulturgeschichte einer Katastrophe (Berlin: Bebra Verlag, 2015).

Description: Between 1911 and 1923, a series of wars–chief among them World War I–would engulf the Ottoman Empire and its successor states. Beginning with Italy's invasion of Ottoman Tripoli in September 1911, the opening salvo in what would soon spiral into a European conflict, the book concludes with the establishment of Turkish independence in the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923. (publ.)

Description: The Ottoman Empire was unprepared for the massive conflict of World War I. Lacking the infrastructure and resources necessary to wage a modern war, the empire's statesmen reached beyond the battlefield to sustain their war effort. They placed unprecedented hardships onto the shoulders of the Ottoman people: mass conscription, a state-controlled economy, widespread food shortages, and ethnic cleansing. By war's end, few aspects of Ottoman daily life remained untouched. This study reveals the catastrophic impact of this global conflict on ordinary Ottomans. Drawing on a wide range of sources–from petitions, diaries, and newspapers to folk songs and religious texts–Yiğit Akın examines how Ottoman men and women experienced war on the home front as government authorities intervened ever more ruthlessly in their lives. The horrors of war brought home, paired with the empire's growing demands on its people, fundamentally reshaped interactions between Ottoman civilians, the military, and the state writ broadly. Ultimately, Akın argues that even as the empire lost the war on the battlefield, it was the destructiveness of the Ottoman state's wartime policies on the home front that led to the empire's disintegration. (publ.)

Description: Stubby was a brave soldier, a loyal friend and a dog. From an army training camp to the trenches in France, this is the incredible true story of Sergeant Stubby, the dog who served bravely in the First World War, sniffing out gas attacks, catching spies and winning the hearts of his fellow soldiers. (publ.)

Description: The main body of this work comprises a minutely researched day-by-day record of events from July 1914 to the formal termination of hostilities in August 1921. The information is presented in vertical columns, each one representing a single area or category of activity. Essays, statistics, tables, maps, sources, a glossary, and index support the chronology in both volumes. Volume II additionally features a "Who's Who" of over 100 of the Great War's key figures. (publ.)
Contents: Volume I. Prelude to Sarajevo ; Sarajevo to the outbreak of war ; The chronology ; Focus on the fronts – volume II. The chronology ; Focus on the fronts ; Armistice terms, 11 Nov 1918 ; Chronology: Towards peace, 1919-1921 ; The peace process, 1918-1923 ; Tables ; 1914-1918 general tables ; Who's who in the First Worl War.

Description: On the centenary of the Great War comes this poignant look at fifty objects never far from Tommy's side–official uniform, good-luck charms, phrasebooks, a sweetheart's letter–some unexpected and others more familiar. With sumptuous original photography and thoughtful text, this is life as the ordinary First World War soldier knew it. (publ.)

Description: This is a portrait of the first months of fighting during World War I. Sources include letters, diaries, official papers and reports, as well as other eyewitness accounts of the fighting. Macdonald lets the British soldiers of nineteen fourteen tell their own moving, and often tragic, stories. Standing against the path of the main German advance, they were often outnumbered ten to one. By the end of the year they had sustained 90% casualties, and it was the end of the "Old Army." (publ.)

Description: During the first twelve months of World War I President Woodrow Wilson had a sincere desire to maintain American neutrality. The president, however, soon found this position unsustainable. As Wilson sought to mediate an end to the European conflict he realized that the war presented an irresistible opportunity to strengthen the US economy though expanded trade with the Allies. As this carefully argued study shows, the contradiction between Wilson's idealistic and pragmatic aims ultimately drove him to abandon neutrality in late 1915–helping to pave the way for America's entrance into the war. (publ.)

Description: When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand's own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God's will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events. As author and historian Sean McMeekin reveals, in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use Ferdinand's murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame. While most accounts of the war's outbreak place the bulk of responsibility on German and Austro-Hungarian militarism, the author draws on new evidence from archives across Europe to show that the worst offenders were actually to be found in Russia and France, whose belligerence and duplicity ensured that war was inevitable. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind, each of the men involved, from Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French president Raymond Poincare sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand's murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen. (publ.)

Description: On 7 May 1915, the Lusitania, a large British luxury liner, was sunk by a German submarine off the Irish coast. Nearly 1,200 people, including 128 American citizens, lost their lives. The sinking of a civilian passenger vessel without warning was a scandal of international scale and helped precipitate the United States' decision to enter the conflict. It also led to the immediate vilification of Germany. Though the ship's sinking has preoccupied historians and the general public for over a century, the German side of the story has remained largely untold until now. ... Willi Jasper provides provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the sinking and its aftermath, focusing on the German reaction and psyche. The attack on the Lusitania, he argues was not simply an escalation of violence but the signalling of a new ideological, moral and religious dimension in the struggle between German "Kultur" and Western civilization. (publ)
Note: Originally published as: Lusitania: Kulturgeschichte einer Katastrophe (Berlin: Bebra Verlag, 2015).

Description: When war broke out in Europe in 1914, political leaders in the United States were swayed by popular opinion to remain neutral; yet less than three years later, the nation declared war on Germany. In this book, the author examines the clash of opinions over the war during this transformative period and offers a fresh perspective on America's decision to enter World War I. He reappraises the public and private diplomacy of President Woodrow Wilson and his closest advisors and explores in great depth the response of Congress to the war. He also investigates the debates that raged in the popular media and among citizen groups that sprang up across the country as the U.S. economy was threatened by European blockades and as Americans died on ships sunk by German U-boats. The decision to engage in battle ultimately belonged to Wilson, but as the author demonstrates, Wilson's choice was not made in isolation. This work provides an examination of America's internal political climate and its changing international role during the seminal period of 1914-1917. (publ.)

Description: When war broke out in Europe in August of 1914, Americans viewed it as the height of madness. Yet a mere three years later, the country was clamoring to join. Micheal S. Neiberg outlines America's lengthy debate and soul-searching about national identity, and the reactions to the dilemmas and crises that moved the country from ambivalence to belligerence. Neiberg also shows how the effects of the pivot from peace to war still resonate, and how the war transformed the United States into a financial powerhouse and global player. (publ.)

Description: The First World War was a conflict of unprecedented ferocity that unleashed such demons as mechanized warfare and mass death on the twentieth century. After the last shot was fired and the troops marched home, approximately three million soldiers remained unaccounted for. Some bodies were found, but they bore no trace of identification; many more had simply vanished in battlefields where as many as a hundred shells had fallen on every square yard. Author Hanson animates and brings to life the combatants who perished without a trace by focusing on three soldiers–an American, an Englishman, and a German–and narrating their war experiences through their diaries and letters. He describes how each man endured the nearly unbearable conditions in the trenches and in the air and relates what is known about their deaths. (publ.)

Description: In September 1916, as World War I advanced into a third deadly year, an American woman named Ellen N. La Motte published a collection of stories about her experiences as a war nurse. Deemed damaging to morale, it was immediately banned in both England and France and later censored in wartime America. At once deeply unsettling and darkly humorous, this compelling book presents a unique view of the destruction wrought by war to the human body and spirit. Long neglected, it is an astounding book by an extraordinary woman and merits a place among major works of WWI literature. This volume gathers, for the first time, La Motte's published writing about the First World War. In addition to Backwash, it includes three long-forgotten essays. Annotated for a modern audience, the book features both a comprehensive introduction to La Motte's war-time writing in its historical and literary contexts and the first extended biography of the "lost" author of this "lost classic." (publ.)

Description: In September 1914, a month after the outbreak of the First World War, two British doctors, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, set out for Paris. There, they built a makeshift hospital in Claridge's, the luxury hotel, and treated hundreds of casualties carted in from France's battlefields. Until this war called men to the front, female doctors had been restricted to treating only women and children. But even skeptical army officials who visited Flora and Louisa's Paris hospital sent back glowing reports of their practice. Their wartime hospital was at the cutting edge of medical care–they were the first to use new antiseptic and the first to use x-ray technology to locate bullets and shrapnel. Journalist Wendy Moore illuminates this turbulent moment when women were, for the first time, allowed to operate on men. Even as medical schools still denied them entry, Suffragettes across the country put down their bricks to volunteer, determined to prove the value of female doctors. Within months, Flora and Louisa were invited by the British Army to set up two more hospitals–the first in northern France and the second a major military hospital in the heart of London. Nicknamed the "Suffragettes' Hospital," Endell Street became renowned as "the best hospital in London," thanks to its pioneering treatments and reputation for patriotism. It was also one of the liveliest, featuring concerts, tea parties, pantomimes, and picnics, in addition to surgeries. Moreover, Flora and Louisa were partners in life as well as in work. While they struggled to navigate the glass ceiling of early twentieth-century medical care, they also grappled with the stresses and joys of their own relationship. But although Flora, Louisa, and Endell Street effectively proved that women doctors could do the work of men, when the war was over, doors that had been opened were slammed shut. Women found themselves once more relegated to treating only women and children, and often in the poorest neighborhoods. It was not until World War II that women were again permitted to treat men. Drawing from letters, memoirs, diaries, army service records, and interviews, Moore brings these remarkable women and their patients to life and reclaims this important, spirited history. (publ.)

Description: So much of the literature on the First World War centers on the trench warfare of the Western Front, and these were essential battlegrounds. But the war was in fact truly a global conflict, and by focusing on a sequence of events in 1916 across many continents, historian Keith Jeffery's work casts new light on the Great War. Starting in January with the end of the catastrophic Gallipoli campaign, Jeffery recounts the massive struggle for Verdun over February and March; the Easter Rising in Ireland in April; dramatic events in Russia in June on the eastern front; the familiar story of the war in East Africa, where some 200,000 Africans may have died; and the November U.S. presidential race in which Woodrow Wilson was re-elected on a platform of keeping the United States out of the war–a position he reversed within five months.

Description: From August 1914 through March 1917, Americans were increasingly horrified at the unprecedented destruction of the First World War. While sending massive assistance to the conflict’s victims, most Americans opposed direct involvement. Their country was immersed in its own internal struggles, including attempts to curb the power of business monopolies, reform labor practices, secure proper treatment for millions of recent immigrants, and expand American democracy. Yet from the first, the war deeply affected American emotions and the nation’s commercial, financial, and political interests. The menace from German U-boats and failure of U.S. attempts at mediation finally led to a declaration of war, signed by President Wilson on April 6, 1917. America and the Great War commemorates the centennial of that turning point in American history. Chronicling the United States in neutrality and in conflict, it presents events and arguments, political and military battles, bitter tragedies and epic achievements that marked U.S. involvement in the first modern war. Drawing on the matchless resources of the Library of Congress, the book includes many eyewitness accounts and more than 250 color and black-and-white images, many never before published. (publ.)

Description: The author analyzes the political influence of World War One and maintains that politicians deliberately took risks that led to war in 1914 and that the war continued as a result of conscious choices including the acceptance of high casualties. (publ.)
Note: Nice selection of maps at front of volume.

Description: The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times–modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society–and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, historian John Keegan fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation. Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. He reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent. But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend–Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them–and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe–from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded–"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable." (publ.)

Description: At 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo, the twentieth century could be said to have been born. The repercussions of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand–Emperor Franz Josef's nephew and heir apparent–by a Bosnian Serb are with us to this day. The immediate aftermath of that act was war. Global in extent, it would last almost five years and leave five million civilian casualties and more than nine million military dead. On both the Allied and Central Powers sides, losses–missing, wounded, dead–were enormous. After the war, barely a town or village in Europe was without its monument to the dead. The war also left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns and artillery; motorized cavalry. It ushered in new tactics of warfare: shipping convoys and U-boat packs, dog fights and reconnaissance air support. And it bequeathed to us terrors we still cannot control: poison gas and chemical warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, massacres and atrocities against entire population groups. But most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole political systems realigned. Instabilities became institutionalized, enmities enshrined. Revolution swept to power ideologies of the left and right. And the social order shifted seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions: all underwent a vast sea change. In all these ways, the twentieth century could be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914. (publ.)

Description: This book provides a concise and insightful history of the "Great War"–from the state of Europe in 1914, to the role of the US, the collapse of Russia, and the eventual surrender of the Central Powers. Examining how and why the war was fought, as well as the historical controversies that still surround the war, Michael Howard also looks at how peace was ultimately made, and describes the potent legacy of resentment left to Germany. (publ.)

Description: Focusing on the decisive engagements of World War I, the author explores the immense challenges faced by the commanders, looking at the changing weapons and tactics and offering his own assessment on what brought about the war's outcome.

Note: 25th Anniversary Ed.
Description: The classic account of the cataclysmic outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the 30 days of battle that followed. In the summer of 1914, Europe with a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws, and not one could be drawn out without upsetting the others. Still, statesmen, field marshals, admirals, kings, and patriots believed what they wanted to believe–or what they feared not to believe–and waited in profound ignorance for victory to reveal itself within a matter of weeks. Instead, the holocaust of August was the prelude to 4 bitter years of deadlocked war that cost a generation of European lives. The German, French, English, and Russian General Staffs had had their plans for war completed as early as 10 years before hostilities began. Germany intended to invade France; England had committed her army to cooperation with the French Army. France, bolstered by her alliance with Russia and her "entente" with Britain, designed her strategy in terms solely of the offensive and the "attaque brusquée." Russia planned a pincer invasion of East Prussia while the main German armies were involved in the West. None of these plans allowed for the contingencies of the others, or recognized their own intrinsic errors. Yet for perhaps five years before the war began, each General Staff knew what the others would do; all that was planned. The bloody catalogue of the battles of August 1914 includes the almost mythic names of Liège, Tannenberg, Mons, the Battle of the Frontiers, and Charleroi. And of men like Joffre, indomitably rebuilding his shattered French armies; Samsonov dying a suicide after the annihilation of the Russian 2nd Army; von Kluck stubbornly committing his fatal mistake; Admiral Souchon choosing his desperate and fateful course for Constantinople. (publ.)

Description: With a combination of depth and global reach, this book reveals how profoundly the war shaped the world to come. Jörn Leonhard treats the clash of arms with a sure feel for grand strategy, the everyday tactics of dynamic movement and slow attrition, the race for ever more destructive technologies, and the grim experiences of frontline soldiers. But the war was much more than a military conflict, or an exclusively European one. Leonhard renders the perspectives of leaders, intellectuals, artists, and ordinary men and women on diverse home fronts as they grappled with the urgency of the moment and the rise of unprecedented political and social pressures. And he shows how the entire world came out of the war utterly changed. Postwar treaties and economic turbulence transformed geopolitics. Old empires disappeared or confronted harsh new constraints, while emerging countries struggled to find their place in an age of instability. At the same time, sparked and fueled by the shock and suffering of war, radical ideologies in Europe and around the globe swept away orders that had seemed permanent, to establish new relationships among elites, masses, and the state. (publ.)

Description: This book is a collection of essays on World War I, discussing the potency of nationalism, the horrific conditions of trench warfare, the nations' casualties, and the weaknesses of the peace settlement. (publ.)

Description: For the Western allies, November 11, 1918 has always been a solemn date–the end of fighting that had destroyed a generation, and also a vindication of a terrible sacrifice with the total collapse of the principal enemies: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. But for much of the rest of Europe this was a day with no meaning, as a nightmarish series of conflicts would soon engulf country after country. Robert Gerwarth asks us to think again about the true legacy of the First World War. In large part it was not the fighting on the Western Front that proved so ruinous to Europe's future, but the devastating aftermath, in which countries on both sides of the original conflict were savaged by revolutions, pogroms, mass expulsions, and further major military clashes. In the years immediately after the armistice, millions would die across central, eastern, and southeastern Europe before the Soviet Union and a series of rickety and exhausted small new states came into being. It was here, in the ruins of Europe, that extreme ideologies such as fascism would take shape and ultimately emerge triumphant. (publ.)

Description: For a generation of men and women, the First World War brought the end of innocence–and the end of faith. Yet for J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia. Loconte shows how the two writers created works that gave an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment. (publ.)

Description: Departing from traditional histories, this tells the story of the First World War entirely through the diaries and letters of its combatants, eyewitnesses and victims. Powerful individual stories are interwoven to form an extraordinary narrative that follows the chronology of the war, in words written on the battlefield and on leave, under occupation and under siege. Soldiers and civilians record with passion, fear and humor their experiences and intimate thoughts, never intended for publication. The book starts with the testimony of a Serbian teenager, one of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassins. Each chapter focuses on one important episode of the war told from opposite sides of the conflict. A German and a British soldier are dug into the parallel lines of trenches on the Somme. An Australian and a Turk describe brutal bayonet charges on the beaches at Gallipoli. A Polish woman endures a gruesome siege and an initially patriotic German schoolgirl, after being exposed to the loss and pain of war, gradually escapes into a world of adolescent love. (publ.)

Description: In this book, historian Selena Daly examines the cultural, political, and military engagement of the Futurists with the war effort, both on the battlefields and on the home front. Beginning with the outbreak of war in 1914, Italian Futurism and the First World War provides vivid accounts of Futurist experiences through an analysis of previously unpublished material, including letters, diaries, and military documents as well as newspapers, magazines, and popular novels. Her focus on Futurist protagonists such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Emilio Settimelli, and lesser known figures such as Giuseppe Steiner and Ennio Valentinelli greatly extends our knowledge of the movement. Daly's timely and detailed analysis challenges long-held assumptions about Futurist activity during the war and offers new insights for both the non-specialist and specialist alike. (publ.)

Description: This poignant work collects letters written from 1913 to 1918 between Vera Brittain and four young men–her fiance Roland Leighton, her younger brother Edward, and their two close friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow–who were killed in World War I. While this correspondence inspired Testament of Youth, Brittain's classic memoir of her wartime experiences, most of the letters are published here for the first time. Taken together, the letters present a remarkable and profoundly moving portrait of five idealistic youths caught up in the cataclysm of war. Spanning the duration of the war, the letters vividly convey the uncertainty, confusion, and almost unbearable suspense of the tumultuous war years. They offer both male and female perspectives and reveal important historical insights by allowing the reader to witness and understand the Great War from a variety of viewpoints: that of the soldier in the trenches, of the volunteer nurse in military hospitals, and even of the civilians on the home front. As World War I fades from living memory, these letters are a powerful and stirring testament to a generation forever shattered and haunted by grief, loss, and promise unfulfilled. (publ.)

Description: The literary works of the First World War are one of the richest sources we have for understanding one of the twentieth century’s most significant conflicts. Not only do many of them have historical merit, but some were critically acclaimed by both contemporaries and subsequent scholars. For example, Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire, one of the earliest novels of the war, won accolades in France and the respect of war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen as well as novelists Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway. This book examines these works and those of war poets Rupert Brooke and John McCrae and others, providing context as well as opportunities to explore thematic elements with primary source documents, such as diaries, letters, memoirs, newspaper and journal articles, speeches, and government publications. It is unique in its use of literary and historical sources as mediums by which to both better understand the literature of the war and use literature to better understand the war itself. (publ.)

Description: On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship–the fastest then in service–could outrun any threat. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small–hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more–all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. (publ.)

Description: On 7 May 1915, the Lusitania, a large British luxury liner, was sunk by a German submarine off the Irish coast. Nearly 1,200 people, including 128 American citizens, lost their lives. The sinking of a civilian passenger vessel without warning was a scandal of international scale and helped precipitate the United States' decision to enter the conflict. It also led to the immediate vilification of Germany. Though the ship's sinking has preoccupied historians and the general public for over a century, the German side of the story has remained largely untold until now. ... Willi Jasper provides provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the sinking and its aftermath, focusing on the German reaction and psyche. The attack on the Lusitania, he argues was not simply an escalation of violence but the signalling of a new ideological, moral and religious dimension in the struggle between German "Kultur" and Western civilization. (publ)
Note: Originally published as: Lusitania: Kulturgeschichte einer Katastrophe (Berlin: Bebra Verlag, 2015).

Description: The great war–or the First World War, as most Americans call it–was the true turning point of the twentieth century. It brought down dynasties and empires. It changed the United States from a bumptious provincial nation into a world power. It made World War II inevitable, and the Cold War as well. Above all, the Great War was history's first total war, an armed conflict on a world stage between industrialized powers. ... A number of the subjects covered here are not just unfamiliar but totally fresh. Who originated the term "no-man's-land" and the word "tank"? What forgotten battles nearly destroyed the French Army in 1915? How did the discovery of a German naval codebook bring the United States into the war? What was the weapon that, for the first time, put a man-made object into the stratosphere? The Great War takes a hard look at the legend of the "Massacre of the Innocents" at Ypres in 1914–an event that became a cornerstone of Nazi mythology. It describes the Gallipoli campaign as it has never been described before–from the Turkish side. Brought to life as well are the horrors of naval warfare, as both British and German sailors experienced them at the Battle of Jutland; the near breakdown of the American commander, John H. Pershing; and the rarely told story of the British disaster on the Tigris River in what is now Iraq. (publ.)

Description: Presents essays about controversial issues during World War I, including the question of American neutrality, the Treaty of Versailles, and the League of Nations.

Description: An analysis of the Great War which looks deeply into the swirling quagmire of violence, racism, and grief stirred up by the war and traces the influence of these strong emotions on the course of European history. (publ.)
Note: Originally published as: 14-18: Retrouver la Guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2000).

Description: World War I was one of the greatest upheavals in history, involving upwards of 70 million combatants–9 million of whom lost their lives–and setting off shock waves that were felt worldwide long after the Armistice of 1918. ... Historian J. M. Winter examines the war year by year, describing the conflict as it was experienced by politicians, generals, soldiers and civilians. Illustrated with hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, the book uncovers many intriguing aspects of the war: it reveals that soldiers in fact spent only two weeks per month in the front trenches, describes how the father of tycoon Rupert Murdoch broke the story of the disaster at Gallipoli, and outlines the unprecedented logistics problems the military faced (it took 20 boxcars of food per day to feed 17,000 men–and there were 5 million men in the British army alone). There is also a wealth of fascinating sidebar material covering a wide variety of secondary topics, from women’s war poetry to the sinking of the Lusitania. The book is further enhanced by numerous first-hand accounts of life during the war, drawn from diaries, memoirs and other writings of both men and women, from all countries and social groups, and it also includes a full chronology, many full-color maps, and tables of essential data. Combining political, military, and social history, this evocative account captures the Great War in all its complexity, from the bloody battles of Verdun, the Somme, and Passchendaele, to the flood of post-war literary and artistic works, including All Quiet on the Western Front and Jean Renoir’s film La Grande Illusion. (publ.)

Description: Draws on excerpts from memoirs, speeches, letters, and newspapers to provide firsthand accounts of the First World War.

Description: The Great War caught a generation of American soldiers at a turning point in the nation's history. These were the first Americans to endure mass machine warfare, and the first to come into close contact with foreign peoples and cultures in large numbers. What was it like, Richard S. Faulkner asks, to be one of these foot soldiers at the dawn of the American century? How did the doughboy experience the rigors of training and military life, interact with different cultures, and endure the shock and chaos of combat? ... This study offers a clear, close-up picture of the doughboys in all of their vibrant diversity, shared purpose, and unmistakably American character. It encompasses an array of subjects from the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their view of the Allied and German soldiers and civilians they encountered, their sexual and spiritual lives, their reasons for serving, and how they lived and fought, to what they thought about their service along every step of the way. Faulkner's detailed portrait draws upon a wealth of sources–thousands of soldiers' letters and diaries, surveys and memoirs, and a host of period documents and reports generated by various staff agencies of the American Expeditionary Forces. (publ.)

Description: Offers a broad range of historical documents on important authors and subjects in World War I research. Written by historians and experts in the field, this resource examines a wide array of primary source documents with an in-depth critical analysis. Articles begin by introducing readers to its historical context, followed by a description of the author's life and circumstances in which the document is written. A document analysis guides readers in understanding key elements of language, rhetoric, and social and political meaning that define the significance of the author and document in American history. (publ.)

Description: Authors use editorials, memoirs, newspaper articles, poems, and letters to recreate the many facets of the war. Technological developments such as the machine gun and barbed wire brought the world trench warfare, which is vividly depicted here in a firsthand account of then-soldier Benito Mussolini. (publ)

Reviewed: NPR (6 April 2017: "The Hello Girls Chronicles The Women Who Fought For America — And For Recognition").
Description: In World War I, telephones linked commanding generals with soldiers in muddy trenches. A woman in uniform connected almost every one of their calls, speeding the orders that won the war. Like other soldiers, the “Hello Girls” swore the Army oath and stayed for the duration. A few were graduates of elite colleges. Most were ordinary, enterprising young women motivated by patriotism and adventure, eager to test their mettle and save the world. A handful followed General Pershing to the gates of Verdun and the battlefields of Meuse-Argonne. When the switch-board operators sailed home a year later, the Army dismissed them without veterans’ benefits or victory medals.

Description: This is not a history of the First World War. It is the story of the women of the resistance in Belgium and Occupied northern France during that conflict. Stroud uses six main characters as a lens to describe the work of an extraordinarily brave group of women. In 1914, before the Germans invaded, they were ordinary people–some were poor, some were rich, some were low born and others from the top echelons of society–they were drawn together by war and they show what the individual can do when faced with apparently overwhelming odds. Their work was not glamorous, but it was essential and has often been overlooked; it was also dangerous and the penalties severe: death or life imprisonment. Three of the women he writes about faced the firing squad, including Gabrielle Petit, the Beligian national hero whose response to her imminent execution gives this book its title. (publ.)

Reviewed: LR Mar. 2018 p. 44; FA 98(2) Mar./Apr. 2019 p. 154.
Description: Female scientists, doctors, and engineers experienced independence and responsibility during the First World War. … Though suffragist Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly that “the war revolutionized the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free,” the truth was very different. Although women had helped the country to victory and won the vote for those over thirty, they had lost the battle for equality. Men returning from the Front reclaimed their jobs, and conventional hierarchies were re-established. Fara examines how these pioneers, temporarily allowed into an exclusive world before the door slammed shut again, paved the way for today's women scientists. (publ.)

Description: In September 1914, a month after the outbreak of the First World War, two British doctors, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, set out for Paris. There, they built a makeshift hospital in Claridge's, the luxury hotel, and treated hundreds of casualties carted in from France's battlefields. Until this war called men to the front, female doctors had been restricted to treating only women and children. But even skeptical army officials who visited Flora and Louisa's Paris hospital sent back glowing reports of their practice. Their wartime hospital was at the cutting edge of medical care–they were the first to use new antiseptic and the first to use x-ray technology to locate bullets and shrapnel. Journalist Wendy Moore illuminates this turbulent moment when women were, for the first time, allowed to operate on men. Even as medical schools still denied them entry, Suffragettes across the country put down their bricks to volunteer, determined to prove the value of female doctors. Within months, Flora and Louisa were invited by the British Army to set up two more hospitals–the first in northern France and the second a major military hospital in the heart of London. Nicknamed the "Suffragettes' Hospital," Endell Street became renowned as "the best hospital in London," thanks to its pioneering treatments and reputation for patriotism. It was also one of the liveliest, featuring concerts, tea parties, pantomimes, and picnics, in addition to surgeries. Moreover, Flora and Louisa were partners in life as well as in work. While they struggled to navigate the glass ceiling of early twentieth-century medical care, they also grappled with the stresses and joys of their own relationship. But although Flora, Louisa, and Endell Street effectively proved that women doctors could do the work of men, when the war was over, doors that had been opened were slammed shut. Women found themselves once more relegated to treating only women and children, and often in the poorest neighborhoods. It was not until World War II that women were again permitted to treat men. Drawing from letters, memoirs, diaries, army service records, and interviews, Moore brings these remarkable women and their patients to life and reclaims this important, spirited history. (publ.)