Staff Picks
Over There: America in the Great War
- Bland L.
- Friday, April 14, 2017
Collection
April 6 was the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into World War I, and several recently published books are revisiting this challenging period in US history. PBS is also marking the occasion with a multipart program titled “The Great War” as part of their American Experience series. If you have seen the show and are interested in learning more about America’s role in the war, as well as the domestic debate that raged over whether the nation should become involved in the conflict, check out any of the following titles from Richland Library’s collection.
Dark Invasion
1915
Published in 2014
Follows New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department's Bomb Squad, as he hunts for German conspirators on American soil during World War I during a sabotage campaign that began in 1914 when the German ambassador to the U.S., Johann von Bernstoff, was instructed to develop an intelligence network to keep America out of WWI and prevent the shipment of supplies and war material to the Allies--both by "any means necessary."
The Hello Girls
America's First Women Soldiers
Published in 2017
"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. The first contingent arrived in France just as the German Army trained "Big Bertha" on Paris, bombarding the frightened city as the new women of the U.S. Army struggled through unlit streets to find their billets. A handful followed General Pershing to the gates of Verdun and the battlefields of Meuse-Argonne. When the switchboard operators sailed home a year later, the Army dismissed them without veterans' benefits or victory medals. The women commenced a sixty-year fight that a handful of survivors carried to triumph in 1979. This book shows how technological developments encouraged an unusual band to volunteer for military service at the precise moment that feminists back home championed a federal suffrage amendment. The same desire to participate fully in the life of their country animated both groups, and both struggled after 1920 to reap the rewards of victory. Their experiences illuminate ways in which sex-role change was embraced and resisted throughout the twentieth century, and the ways that men and women struggled together for gender justice."--Provided by publisher.
March 1917
On the Brink of War and Revolution
Published in 2017
"A riveting history of the month that transformed the world's greatest nations as Russia faced revolution and America entered World War I. "We are provincials no longer," said Woodrow Wilson on March 5, 1917, at his second inaugural. He spoke on the eve of America's entrance into World War I, as Russia teetered between autocracy and democracy. Just ten days after Wilson's declaration, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne, ending a three-centuries-long dynasty and ushering in the false dawn of a democratic Russia. Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany a few short weeks later, asserting the United States's new role as a global power and its commitment to spreading American ideals abroad. Will Englund draws on a wealth of contemporary diaries, memoirs, and newspaper accounts to furnish texture and personal detail to the story of that month. March 1917 celebrates the dreams of warriors, pacifists, revolutionaries, and reactionaries, even as it demonstrates how their successes and failures constitute the origin story of the complex world we inhabit a century later."--Provided by publisher.
The Unsubstantial Air
American Fliers in the First World War
Published in 2014
"The vivid story of the young Americans who fought and died in the aerial battles of World War I. The Unsubstantial Air is a chronicle of war that is more than a military history; it traces the lives and deaths of the young Americans who fought in the skies over Europe in World War I. Using letters, journals, and memoirs, it speaks in their voices and answers primal questions: What was it like to be there? What was it like to fly those planes, to fight, to kill? The volunteer fliers were often privileged young men--the sort of college athletes and Ivy League students who might appear in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and sometimes did. For them, a war in the air would be like a college reunion. Others were roughnecks from farms and ranches, for whom it would all be strange. Together they would make one Air Service and fight one bitter, costly war. A wartime pilot himself, the memoirist and critic Samuel Hynes tells these young men's saga as the story of a generation. He shows how they dreamed of adventure and glory, and how they learned the realities of a pilot's life, the hardships and the danger, and how they came to know both the beauty of flight and the constant presence of death. They gasp in wonder at the world seen from a plane, struggle to keep their hands from freezing in open-air cockpits, party with actresses and aristocrats, and search for their friends' bodies on the battlefield. Their romantic war becomes more than that--it becomes a harsh but often thrilling new reality"-- Provided by publisher.
War Against War
The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918
Published in 2017
"The untold story of the movement that came close to keeping the United States out of the First World War. This book is about the Americans who tried to stop their nation from fighting in one of history's most destructive wars and then were hounded by the government when they refused to back down. In the riveting War Against War, Michael Kazin brings us into the ranks of the largest, most diverse, and most sophisticated peace coalition up to that point in US history. They came from a variety of backgrounds: wealthy and middle and working class, urban and rural, white and black, Christian and Jewish and atheist. They mounted street demonstrations and popular exhibitions, attracted prominent leaders from the labor and suffrage movements, ran peace candidates for local and federal office, and founded new organizations that endured beyond the cause. For almost three years, they helped prevent Congress from authorizing a massive increase in the size of the US army--a step advocated by ex-president Theodore Roosevelt. Soon after the end of the Great War, most Americans believed it had not been worth fighting. And when its bitter legacy led to the next world war, the warnings of these peace activists turned into a tragic prophecy--and the beginning of a surveillance state that still endures today. War Against War is a dramatic account of a major turning point in the history of the United States and the world"-- Provided by publisher.
The World Remade
America in World War I
Published in 2017
"An indispensable, sharply drawn account of America's pivotal--and still controversial--intervention in World War I, enlivened by fresh insights into the key issues, events, and personalities of the period, from the New York Times bestselling author of A World Undone"-- Provided by publisher.
The Path to War
How the First World War Created Modern America
Published in 2016
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. -- adapted from dust jacket.
War of Attrition
Fighting the First World War
Published in 2014
The Great War of 1914-1918 was the first mass conflict to fully mobilize the resources of industrial powers against one another, resulting in a brutal, bloody, protracted war of attrition between the world's great economies. Now, one hundred years after the first guns of August rang out on the Western front, historian William Philpott reexamines the causes and lingering effects of the first truly modern war. Drawing on the experience of front line soldiers, munitions workers, politicians, and diplomats, War of Attrition explains for the first time why and how this new type of conflict was fought as it was fought; and how the attitudes and actions of political and military leaders, and the willing responses of their peoples, stamped the twentieth century with unprecedented carnage on--and behind--the battlefield. War of Attrition also establishes link between the bloody ground war in Europe and political situation in the wider world, particularly the United States. America did not enter the war until 1917, but, as Philpott demonstrates, the war came to America as early as 1914. By 1916, long before the Woodrow Wilson's impassioned speech to Congress advocating for war, the United States was firmly aligned with the Allies, lending dollars and selling guns and opposing German attempts to spread submarine warfare. War of Attrition skillfully argues that the emergence of the United States on the world stage is directly related to her support for the conflagration that consumed so many European lives and livelihoods. In short, the war that ruined Europe enabled the rise of America.
The Long Shadow
The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century
Published in 2014
One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century.
America's Sailors in the Great War
Seas, Skies, and Submarines
Published in 2017
"The First World War demanded of the American Navy radically different solutions, skills and thinking. The US fleet of big ships designed to fight other big ships in classic line-of-battle formation entered an unprecedented global conflict with no answer to a German innovation--the U-boat. The navy's few primitive ocean-going submarines and an entirely new type of small warship, aptly named the subchaser, helped secure an eventual victory over the U-boat. A comprehensive convoy system quickly became a critical element in the maritime conflict demanding the escort service of nearly every destroyer in the American fleet and the outstanding seamanship that went with it." --From jacket.
The Deluge
The Great War, America, and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916-1931
Published in 2014
"A century after the outbreak of the First World War, a powerful explanation of why the war's legacy continues to shape our world. The war would make a celebrity out of Woodrow Wilson and would ratify the emergence of the US as the dominant force in the world economy"-- Provided by publisher.
Betrayal at Little Gibraltar
A German Fortress, a Treacherous American General, and the Battle to End World War I
Published in 2016
"A painstakingly researched account of World War I's violent Meuse-Argonne Offensive and the 100-year-old cover-up at its center traces the efforts of AEF Commander-in-Chief John J. Pershing to capture the near-impregnable German Montfaucon and the inside betrayal that cost untold lives,"--NoveList.
Forty-seven Days
How Pershing's Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I
Published in 2016
The Battle of the Meuse-Argonne is the deadliest clash in American history: more than a million untested American soldiers went up against a better-trained and experienced German army, resulting in more than twenty-six thousand deaths and leaving nearly a hundred thousand wounded. Yet in forty-seven days of intense combat, these Americans forced the Germans to surrender, bringing the First World War to an end. Historian Mitchell Yockelson tells how General John J. ((٣Pershing’s exemplary leadership led to the unlikeliest of victories.