We will be flooded with books as we near the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into the first modern war. Yet one book stands by itself, as tall and proud and solidly integral as a solider: America and the Great War (Bloomsbury, $45).
Written by Margaret E. Wagner, senior writer and editor of the Library of Congress, the tome colorfully documents with more than 250 illustrations from the unmatched Library of Congress collections, many rarely seen and previously published, the days leading up to President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of war against Germany; the fight of the American people to survive the war; and the heartbreaking uncertainty that came in its aftermath.
When the Great War engulfed Europe, America was witnessing an unprecedented surge in industrial and financial growth, the revolution that erupted in Mexico in 1910 that was still unfolding south of the border, and the fight for equal rights from Suffragettes and African Americans. America and the Great War chronicles the events and arguments, the calculations and tragedies that brought the United States into the first modern war on April 6, 1917.
Filled with the voices of individuals both well-known and previously unsung, it reveals the explosion of patriotic fervor as the country entered the fray, the near-miraculous expansion of its Army, its military engagements abroad, and its struggles against the suppression of civil liberties at home.