Love and Death in the Great War

by Andrew J. Huebner

Overview

Americans today harbor no strong or consistent collective memory of the First World War. Ask why the country fought or what they accomplished, and "democracy" is the most likely if vague response. The circulation of confusing or lofty rationales for intervention began as soon as President Woodrow Wilson secured a war declaration in April 1917. Yet amid those shifting justifications, Love and Death in the Great War argues, was a more durable and resonant one: Americans would fight for home and family. Officials in the military and government, grasping this crucial reality, invested the war with personal meaning, as did popular culture. "Make your mother proud of you/And the Old Red White and Blue" went George Cohan's famous tune "Over There." Federal officials and their allies in public culture, in short, told the war story as a love story. Intervention came at a moment when arbiters of traditional home and family were regarded as under pressure from all sides: industrial work, women's employment, immigration, urban vice, woman suffrage, and the imagined threat of black sexual aggression. Alleged German crimes in France and Belgium seemed to further imperil women and children. War promised to restore convention, stabilize gender roles, and sharpen male character. Love and Death in the Great War tracks such ideas of redemptive war across public and private spaces, policy and implementation, home and front, popular culture and personal correspondence. In beautifully rendered prose, Andrew J. Huebner merges untold stories of ordinary men and women with a history of wartime culture. Studying the radiating impact of war alongside the management of public opinion, he recovers the conflict's emotional dimensions--its everyday rhythms, heartbreaking losses, soaring possibilities, and broken promises.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190853945
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	778,403
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Andrew J. Huebner is associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. He is the author of The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era.

Table of Contents

Note on Sources Prologue Chapter 1: Johnny Get Your Gun Chapter 2: Make Your Daddy Glad Chapter 3: Tell Your Sweetheart not to Pine Chapter 4: The Yanks are Coming Chapter 5: So Prepare, Say a Prayer Chapter 6: Yankee Doodle Do or Die Chapter 7: It's Over Over There Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"There have been few attempts to bind the home- and war-front worlds. So, it is with pleasure and relief that one can now turn to Andrew J. Huebner's book as a work that successfully bridges these divides and links microhistory with larger perspectives as it sensitively conveys how the worlds of home and war intermingled for those in the United States ... Starting with the era immediately before the United States entered the First World War and continuing through its armistice, Huebner's book helps us to understand the human scope of a war that often overwhelms us by its sheer numbers, both of those mobilised and those who died ... Huebner's work ... effectively brings the individual and family stories of this war into sharp focus in a way that should engage students and scholars alike." — Susan R. Grayzel, English Historical Review

"Love and Death in the Great War is a well-written, insightful, and cogent telling of wartime culture in America during World War I, and it makes a significant contribution to an understanding of the presence, power, and permanency of such crucial concepts as love and family as well as their complex and interwoven relationship with World War I... Students, scholars, and general readers alike should all profit from reading Huebner's vivid telling of and cogent analysis about such a critical moment in American history." — William A. Taylor, American Historical Review

"Love and Death in the Great War is an amazing book. Through the lives and letters of ordinary individuals, Andrew Huebner reflects on the linkages of nation and emotion, the role of the family in American politics, and the lived experience of the mass institutions that have structured modern America since we went to war in 1917." —Christopher Capozzola, author of Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen

"Beautifully crafted and elegantly written, Andrew Huebner's Love and Death in the Great War lays bare the emotional truth of war. Seduced by the war's promise of redemption, the three American families at the heart of Huebner's tale experience the war's full tumult: love and heartbreak, violence and liberation, life and death. Through razor-sharp analysis and meticulous research, Huebner restores World War I to its rightful place as a transformative event in the lives of Americans."—Jennifer D. Keene, author of Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America

"Viewing grand historical events through the lens of a small case study is a difficult task. In the skilled hands of Andrew Huebner, both the small and grand stories come alive, giving us fresh insights into the meaning of war for American communities and families."—Michael S. Neiberg, author of Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America

"The truth that soldiers fight for their families is vividly told in this moving social history of family encounters with the demands and costs of World War I. Very much history from the bottom up, Huebner's book is a major contribution to our understanding of how ordinary people—including his own family—have ascribed meaning to war and its aftermath."—Jay Winter, Yale University

"Engrossing and poignant...With exceptional nuance and writerly grace, Huebner probes the war's affective history...By placing the family at the center of his study-while remaining ever mindful of the intersections between cultural constructions of the home and those of race, ethnicity, class, and gender-Andrew Huebner makes an important and original contribution to First World War Studies. Dozens of new books on World War I have appeared since the start of the centennial period in 2014. Beautifully written and deeply moving, Love and Death in the Great War stands among the very best of them."—Steven Trout, Journal of Social History

From the Publisher