Love and Death in the Great War

Love and Death in the Great War
ISBN-10
0190853921
ISBN-13
9780190853921
Category
History
Pages
390
Language
English
Published
2018
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
Andrew J. Huebner

Description

Americans today harbor no strong or consistent collective memory of the First World War. Ask why they fought or what they accomplished, and "democracy" is the most likely if vague response. The circulation of confusing or lofty rationales for intervention started from the moment President Woodrow Wilson secured a war declaration in April 1917. Yet amid those shifting justifications was a more durable and resonant one: Americans would fight for home and family. This book merges the stories of several American families with analysis of wartime popular culture. It argues that family, in lived experience and as symbolic motivator, gave the war meaning, recovering the conflict's personal dimensions. But that narrative had undergone transformative challenges by war's end.

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