For the centenary of Americas entry into World War I, A. Scott Berg presents alandmark anthology of American writing from the cataclysmic conflict that setthe course of the 20th century. Few Americans appreciate the significance and intensity of Americasexperience of World War I, the global cataclysm that transformed the modernworld. Published to mark the centenary of the U.S. entry into the conflict,World War I Told by the Americans Who Lived It brings together a wide rangeof writings by American participants and observers to tell a vivid and dramaticfirsthand story from the outbreak of war in 1914 through the Armistice, the ParisPeace Conference, and the League of Nations debate. The eighty-eight men and women collected in the volume-soldiers, airmen, nurses, diplomats, statesmen,political activists, journalists-provide unique insights into how Americans ofevery stripe perceived the war, why they supported or opposed intervention, howthey experienced the nightmarish reality of industrial warfare, and how the conflictchanged American life. Richard Harding Davis witnesses the burning of LouvainEdith Wharton tours the front in the Argonne and Flanders John Reed reports fromSerbia and Bukovina Charles Lauriat describes the sinking of the Lusitania LeslieDavis records the Armenian genocide Jane Addams and Emma Goldman protestagainst militarism Victor Chapman and Edmond Genet fly with the LafayetteEscadrille Floyd Gibbons, Hervey Allen, and Edward Lukens experience theferocity of combat in Belleau Wood, Fismette, and the Meuse-Argonne and EllenLa Motte and Mary Borden unflinchingly examine the human wreckage broughtinto military hospitals. W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, andClaude McKay protest the racist treatment of black soldiers and the violencedirected at African Americans on the home front Carrie Chapman Catt connectsthe war with the fight for women suffrage Willa Cather explores the impact of thewar on rural Nebraska Henry May recounts a deadly influenza outbreak onboard atroop transport Oliver Wendell Holmes weighs the limits of free speech inwartime Woodrow Wilson envisions a world without war. A coda presents threeiconic literary works by Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, and John Dos Passos.With an introduction and headnotes by A. Scott Berg, brief biographies of the writers, and endpaper maps.
