Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Making a strong case that America's moral and material contributions were vital to the Allied war effort, Financial Times journalist Mead also argues convincingly that the performance of the American Expeditionary Force--comprised of young "doughboys"--has been systematically underrated. Mead uses firsthand accounts to reconstruct the AEF's operational experiences, which largely reflected the problems of improvising a multimillion-man army in little over a year. He is particularly successful at portraying the frontline experience, with its mixture of trench and open warfare, presenting the doughboys as enthusiastic fighters who learned quickly when given a chance--and who were a good deal better at war than their officers, especially the generals. The problems the AEF faced in the Meuse-Argonne, according to Mead, in good part reflected the poor planning and hasty execution occasioned by General John J. Pershing's insistence on mounting the offensive in the immediate aftermath of Saint-Mihiel. Mead's proneness to take enlisted men's grievances and complaints at face value at times gives the book a strong flavor of studies from the 1930s, but his reiterated demonstrations of the AEF's virulent antiblack racism clearly distinguishes this book from such tainted sources. Less effective is the treatment of the war's wider issues: America's participation, for instance, becomes as much the consequence of French and British wire pulling as of German behaviors that posed objective short- and long-term threats to U.S. security. Nevertheless, readers looking for an up-to-date, single-volume account of American WWI troop experience should look no further. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
This is a soldier's story. In his first book, Mead, a former reporter for the Financial Times, traces the history of American military involvement in World War I primarily from the perspective of the troops directly involved in the action. Mead relies heavily on the papers at the Army's Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks--a largely untapped trove of primary sources by the doughboys, including questionnaires of American Expeditionary Force survivors conducted as late as the 1970s and 1980s. While the focus of the book is on the troops in the trenches, Mead nicely balances this perspective with an overview of the strategic picture and ably discusses the political and social issues facing the nation as it became involved in its first major overseas intervention. The text is enhanced by 50 photos, notes, and a bibliography. Overall, this title provides a unique perspective on the troops of a nation on the cusp of becoming a world power and is filled with voices of excitement, anticipation, and fear of those who helped this transition come to pass. Highly recommended.--Daniel Liestman, Kansas State Univ. Libs., Manhattan Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Nicely illustrated with 48 black-and-white historical photographs, Gary Mead's The Doughboys is the story of the more than three million men who comprised the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War. More than 50,000 of these men were killed in battle. Enhanced with maps and list tallies, the American involvement in 1917 and 1918 is carefully and accurately presented resulting in one of the best and most "reader friendly" presentations available to military buffs, American military history students, and anyone with an interest in America's first military involvement on European soil, an involvement that would establish America as a world power for the remainder of the twentieth century.
Kirkus Reviews
An impressive historical debut that gazes behind time's curtain at the startling, pivotal experiences of the American fighting men of WWI. Financial Times journalist Mead swings for the fences in his self-proclaimed attempt to rescue the experience of the two million men who served in France and Russia in 1917—18 from an odd ahistorical perspective that undeniably awards more veneration to tales of more recent, resonant wars. It's an extremely dense work, scrupulously researched, with efforts made to capture a vanished pre-1920s American idiom, which engrosses the reader despite some awkwardness of scale. Mead asserts that"without the Doughboys the Allies (Britain and France) would not have defeated the Central Powers"; yet he also explores the conflicts between the officers and aims of the American Expeditionary Force and those of their European allies, citing"tremendous antipathy" that resulted in privations for American soldiers, while their contributions were overlooked. Mead uses original sources, including doughboy journals, letters, and memoirs, which eloquently convey the unschooled early-century elegance of simple men hurled unsuspectingly into the abyss; although he evinces great respect for these men, a more acid tone creeps in when addressing the pompous founts of war fever among politicians, hack journalists, and munitions-makers holding Allied debts. Much narrative is devoted to crisp, hair-raising depictions of what awaited the American conscripts on the Western Front, seemingly with scrupulous attention to true military chronology. Yet Mead also evokes the major personalities behind the war, like General Pershing and his oftenirritatingAllied counterparts, as well as the frosty, idealistic President Wilson. The author balances an essentially military history with perceptive portrayals of the war at home, examining the strangulation of civil liberties and the mob vengeance directed at naturalized Germans and war resisters; he also devotes sober discussion to the cruel lot of African-American doughboys, who found themselves excluded from the"freedom" they fought for, and whose valor was falsely impugned. A fine account of the Great War that deserves consideration alongside recent, more acclaimed studies.
