Library of America #289

Map on liner papers

A collection of 127 first-person narratives by writers such as Richard Harding Davis, Edith Wharton, John Reed, Henry Morgenthau, Leslie Davis, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman, Victor Chapman, Edmond Genet, Hervey Allen, Ellen N. La Motte, Mary Borden, Carrie Chapman Catt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and many more

"The world must be made safe for democracy," Woodrow Wilson declared a century ago, as he led the nation into war. This collection brings together 127 pieces that tell the vivid story of battlefront and homefront from Sarajevo and the invasion of Belgium through the sinking of the Lusitania, the Armenian genocide, the controversy over intervention, and the terrible ferocity of Belleau Wood and the Meuse-Argonne, to the League of Nations debate and the racial violence and political repression that divided postwar America. The writing gathered here illuminates, as no retrospective history can, how Americans perceived and felt about the war, why they supported or opposed intervention, how they endured the nightmarish reality of modern industrial warfare, and how they experienced the uncertainty and contingency of unfolding events. And it shows how World War I framed issues that still haunt us: what role should America play in the world? Are our claims to moral leadership abroad undercut by racial injustice at home? What does our nation owe those who fight on its behalf? Among the writers: war correspondent Richard Harding Davis Witnesses the burning of Louvain; Edith Wharton tours the war zones in the Argonne and Flanders; John Reed records the devastation in Serbia and Galicia; diplomats Henry Morgenthau and Leslie Davis report on the extermination of the Armenians; Jane Addams and Emma Goldman warn against militarism; pilots Victor Chapman and Edmond Genet describe flying with the Lafayette Escadrille; infantry officer Hervey Allen recalls the hellish fighting at Fismette; nurses Ellen N. La Motte and Mary Borden depict the "human wreckage" brought into military hospitals; suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt connects the war with the struggle for women's rights; and justice Oliver Wendell Holmes considers the limits of free speech in wartime. W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, and Jessie Redmon Fauset expose the contradiction between the nation's claim to be fighting for democracy abroad and its brutal treatment of African Americans at home. The international role of the United States is debated in strikingly contemporary terms by Wilson and his critics, as the nation grapples with its emergence as a leading world power. A coda presents three iconic literary works by Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, and John Dos Passos that capture the postwar disillusionment felt by many Americans. Includes headnotes, a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory endnotes, and an index.--Jacket