Dr. Sahr Conway-Lanz is a scholar-in-residence with the history department at Widener University. He was formerly a historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. There, he curated the papers of Woodrow Wilson, along with other manuscript collections documenting modern American history. Conway-Lanz also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia. Previously he worked as an archivist for the Yale University Library and the National Archives.
Collateral Damage by
"Collateral damage" is a military term for the inadvertent casualties and destruction inflicted on civilians in the course of military operations. In Collateral Damage: Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II, Sahr Conway-Lanz chronicles the history of America's attempt to reconcile the ideal of sparing civilians with the reality that modern warfare results in the killing of innocent people. Drawing on policymakers' response to the issues raised by the atrocities of World War II and the use of the atomic bomb, as well as the ongoing debate by the American public and the media as the Korean War developed, Conway-Lanz provides a comprehensive examination of modern American discourse on the topic of civilian casualties and provides a fascinating look at the development of what is now commonly known as collateral damage.
Woodrow Wilson by
The first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars. A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president—he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties. Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson’s domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious—not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. As the president of Princeton, his encounters with the often rancorous battles of academe prepared him for state and national politics. Just two years after he was elected governor of New Jersey, Wilson, now a leader in the progressive movement, won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in one of the twentieth century’s most memorable presidential elections. Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people. John Milton Cooper, Jr., gives us a vigorous, lasting record of Wilson’s life and achievements. This is a long overdue, revelatory portrait of one of our most important presidents—particularly resonant now, as another president seeks to change the way government relates to the people and regulates the economy.
Nothing Less Than War by
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, political leaders in the United States were swayed by popular opinion to remain neutral; yet less than three years later, the nation declared war on Germany. In Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I, Justus D. Doenecke examines the clash of opinions over the war during this transformative period and offers a fresh perspective on America's decision to enter World War I. Doenecke reappraises the public and private diplomacy of President Woodrow Wilson and his closest advisors and explores in great depth the response of Congress to the war. He also investigates the debates that raged in the popular media and among citizen groups that sprang up across the country as the U.S. economy was threatened by European blockades and as Americans died on ships sunk by German U-boats. The decision to engage in battle ultimately belonged to Wilson, but as Doenecke demonstrates, Wilson's choice was not made in isolation. Nothing Less Than War provides a comprehensive examination of America's internal political climate and its changing international role during the seminal period of 1914--1917.
To End All Wars by
In his widely acclaimed To End All Wars, Thomas Knock provides an intriguing, often provocative narrative of Woodrow Wilson's epic quest for a new world order. The account follows Wilson's thought and diplomacy from his policy toward revolutionary Mexico, through his dramatic call for "Peace without Victory" in World War I, to the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations. Throughout Knock explores the place of internationalism in American politics, sweeping away the old view that isolationism was the cause of Wilson's failure and revealing the role of competing visions of internationalism--conservative and progressive.
The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 1896-1898 by
This massive collection includes all important letters, speeches, interviews, press conferences, and public papers on Woodrow Wilson. The volumes make available as never before the materials essential to understanding Wilson's personality, his intellectual, religious, and political development, and his careers as educator, writer, orator, and statesman. The Papers not only reveal the private and public man, but also the era in which he lived, making the series additionally valuable to scholars in various fields of history between the 1870's and the 1920's.
Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917 by
Events from the beginning of the presidential campaign of 1916 to the entry of the United States into the First World War are covered in this fifth volume of Professor Link's authoritative biography of Woodrow Wilson. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917 by 
The Wilsonian Century by
For most of this century, American foreign policy was guided by a set of assumptions that were formulated during World War I by President Woodrow Wilson. In this incisive reexamination, Frank Ninkovich argues that the Wilsonian outlook, far from being a crusading, idealistic doctrine, was reactive, practical, and grounded in fear. Wilson and his successors believed it absolutely essential to guard against world war or global domination, with the underlying aim of safeguarding and nurturing political harmony and commercial cooperation among the great powers. As the world entered a period of unprecedented turbulence, Wilsonianism became a "crisis internationalism" dedicated to preserving the benign vision of "normal internationalism" with which the United States entered the twentieth century. In the process of describing Wilson's legacy, Ninkovich reinterprets most of the twentieth century's main foreign policy developments. He views the 1920s, for example, not as an isolationist period but as a reversion to Taft's Dollar Diplomacy. The Cold War, with its faraway military interventions, illustrates Wilsonian America's preoccupation with achieving a cohesive world opinion and its abandonment of traditional, regional conceptions of national interest. The Wilsonian Century offers a striking alternative to traditional interest-based interpretations of U.S. foreign policy. In revising the usual view of Wilson's contribution, Ninkovich shows the extraordinary degree to which Wilsonian ideas guided American policy through a century of conflict and tension. "[A] succinct but sweeping survey of American foreign relations from Theodore Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. . . . [A] thought-provoking book."—Richard V. Damms, History "[W]orthy of sharing shelf space with George F. Kennan, William Appleman Williams, and other major foreign policy theorists."—Library Journal
Dr. Richard Hopkins is an assistant professor of history at Widener University. He teaches courses in European, urban, environmental, and gender history, including a seminar on World War Memory and Commemoration. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of modern France, urban space, and the relationship between the individual and state authority.
Planning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris by
In the second half of the nineteenth century, state and municipal governments oversaw the explosive growth of public parks, squares, and gardens throughout the city of Paris. In Planning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris, Richard S. Hopkins skillfully weaves together social and cultural history to argue that the expansion of these greenspaces served as more than simple urban embellishment. Rather, they provided an essential component of the Second Empire's efforts to transform and revitalize France's capital city, and their development continued well into the Third Republic. Hopkins brings a new dimension to the study of nineteenth-century Parisian urbanism by considering the parks and squares of Paris from multiple perspectives: the reformers who advocated for them, the planners who constructed them, the workers who maintained them, and the neighborhood residents who used them. As public areas over which private citizens felt a high degree of ownership, these spaces offered a unique opportunity for collaboration between city officials and residents. Hopkins examines the national and municipal goals for the greenspaces, their intended contributions to public health, and the roles of park service employees and neighborhood groups in their ongoing centrality to Parisian life. Hopkins's study moves deftly from the aspirations of the political authorities to the ways in which new public spaces contributed to community-building and neighborhood identity. Drawing on extensive archival research, he depicts a greenspace design and development process that illustrates the dynamic relationship between citizens and city.
Practiced Citizenship by
Over fifty years ago sociologist T. H. Marshall first opened the modern debate about the evolution of full citizenship in modern nation-states, arguing that it proceeded in three stages: from civil rights, to political rights, and finally to social rights. The shortcomings of this model were clear to feminist scholars. As political theorist Carol Pateman argued, the modern social contract undergirding nation-states was from the start premised on an implicit "sexual contract." According to Pateman, the birth of modern democracy necessarily resulted in the political erasure of women. Since the 1990s feminist historians have realized that Marshall's typology failed to describe adequately developments that affected women in France. An examination of the role of women and gender in welfare-state development suggested that social rights rooted in republican notions of womanhood came early and fast for women in France even while political and economic rights would continue to lag behind. While their considerable access to social citizenship privileges shaped their prospects, the absence of women's formal rights still dominates the conversation. Practiced Citizenship offers a significant rereading of that narrative. Through an analysis of how citizenship was lived, practiced, and deployed by women in France in the modern period, Practiced Citizenship demonstrates how gender normativity and the resulting constraints placed on women nevertheless created opportunities for a renegotiation of the social and sexual contract.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by
Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne. Barthas' riveting wartime narrative, first published in France in 1978, presents the vivid, immediate experiences of a frontline soldier. This excellent new translation brings Barthas' wartime writings to English-language readers for the first time. His notebooks and letters represent the quintessential memoir of a "poilu," or "hairy one," as the untidy, unshaven French infantryman of the fighting trenches was familiarly known. Upon Barthas' return home in 1919, he painstakingly transcribed his day-to-day writings into nineteen notebooks, preserving not only his own story but also the larger story of the unnumbered soldiers who never returned. Recounting bloody battles and endless exhaustion, the deaths of comrades, the infuriating incompetence and tyranny of his own officers, Barthas also describes spontaneous acts of camaraderie between French poilus and their German foes in trenches just a few paces apart. An eloquent witness and keen observer, Barthas takes his readers directly into the heart of the Great War.
A Fraternity of Arms by
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had already become an international power and a recognized force at sea, but its army remained little more than a frontier constabulary. In fact, when America finally entered World War I, the U.S. Army was still only a tenth the size of the smallest of the major European forces. While most previous work on America's participation in the Great War has focused on alliance with Great Britain, Robert Bruce argues that the impact of the Franco-American relationship was of far greater significance. He makes a convincing case that the French, rather than the British, were the main military partner of the United States in its brief but decisive participation in the war-and that France deserves much credit for America's emergence as a world military power. In this important new look at the First World War, Bruce reveals how two countries established a close and respectful relationship-marking the first time since the American Revolution that the United States had waged war as a member of a military coalition. While General Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces did much to buoy French morale and military operations, France reciprocated by training over 80 percent of all American army divisions sent to Europe, providing most of their artillery and tanks, and even commanding them in combat. As Bruce discloses, virtually every military engagement in which the AEF participated was a Franco-American operation. He provides significant new material on all major battles--not only the decisive Second Battle of the Marne, but also St. Mihiel, Cantigny, Reims, Soissons, and other engagements--detailing the key contributions of this coalition to the final defeat of Imperial Germany. Throughout the book, he also demonstrates that there was a mutual bond of affection not only between French and American soldiers but between the French and American people as well, with roots planted deep in the democratic ideal. By revealing the overlooked importance of this crucial alliance, A Fraternity of Arms provides new insights not only into World War I but into coalition war-making as well. Contrary to the popular belief that relations between France and the United States have been tenuous or tendentious at best, Bruce reminds us that less than a century ago French and American soldiers fought side by side in a common cause--not just as allies and brothers-in-arms, but as true friends.
Paths of Glory by
Anthony Clayton is an acknowledged expert on the French military and his book is a major contribution to the study and understanding of the First World War. He reveals why and how the French army fought as it did. He profiles its senior commanders - Joffre, Petain, Nivelle and Foch - and analyses its major campaigns both on the Western Front and in the Near East and Africa. PATHS OF GLORY also considers in detail the officers, how they kept their trenches and how men from very different areas of France fought and died together. He scrutinises the make-up and performance of France's large colonial armies and investigates the mutinies of 1917. Ultimately, he reveals how the traumatic French experience of the 1914-18 war indelibly shaped a nation.
Pershing's Crusaders by
The Great War caught a generation of American soldiers at a turning point in the nation's history. At the moment of the Republic's emergence as a key player on the world stage, these were the first Americans to endure mass machine warfare, and the first to come into close contact with foreign peoples and cultures in large numbers. What was it like, Richard S. Faulkner asks, to be one of these foot soldiers at the dawn of the American century? How did the doughboy experience the rigors of training and military life, interact with different cultures, and endure the shock and chaos of combat? The answer can be found in Pershing's Crusaders, the most comprehensive, and intimate, account ever given of the day-to-day lives and attitudes of the nearly 4.2 million American soldiers mobilized for service in World War I. Pershing's Crusaders offers a clear, close-up picture of the doughboys in all of their vibrant diversity, shared purpose, and unmistakably American character. It encompasses an array of subjects from the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their view of the Allied and German soldiers and civilians they encountered, their sexual and spiritual lives, their reasons for serving, and how they lived and fought, to what they thought about their service along every step of the way. Faulkner's vast yet finely detailed portrait draws upon a wealth of sources--thousands of soldiers' letters and diaries, surveys and memoirs, and a host of period documents and reports generated by various staff agencies of the American Expeditionary Forces. Animated by the voices of soldiers and civilians in the midst of unprecedented events, these primary sources afford an immediacy rarely found in historical records. Pershing's Crusaders is, finally, a work that uniquely and vividly captures the reality of the American soldier in WWI for all time.
First to Fly by
If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence--a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an industry that would redefine transportation and warfare for future generations. InFirst to Fly, lauded historian Charles Bracelen Flood tells the story of the men who were at the forefront of that revolution: the daredevil Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille, who flew in French planes, wore French uniforms, and showed the world an American brand of heroism before the United States entered the Great War. As citizens of a neutral nation from 1914 to early 1917, Americans were prohibited from serving in a foreign army, but many brave young souls soon made their way into European battle zones: as ambulance drivers, nurses, and more dangerously, as soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. It was partly from the ranks of the latter group, and with the sponsorship of an expat American surgeon and a Vanderbilt, that the Lafayette Escadrille was formed in 1916 as the first and only all-American squadron in the French Air Service. Flying rudimentary planes, against one-in-three odds of being killed, these fearless young men gathered reconnaissance and shot down enemy aircraft, participated in the Battle of Verdun and faced off with the Red Baron, dueling across the war-torn skies like modern knights on horseback. Drawing on rarely seen primary sources, Flood chronicles the startling success of that intrepid band, and gives a compelling look at the rise of aviation and a new era of warfare.
The French Army and the First World War by
This is a comprehensive new history of the French army's critical contribution to the Great War. Ranging across all fronts, Elizabeth Greenhalgh examines the French army's achievements and failures and sets these in the context of the difficulties of coalition warfare and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the enemy forces it faced. Drawing from new archival sources, she reveals the challenges of dealing with and replenishing a mass conscript army in the face of slaughter on an unprecedented scale, and shows how, through trials and defeats, French generals and their troops learned to adapt and develop techniques which eventually led to victory. In a unique account of the largest Allied army on the Western Front, she revises our understanding not only of wartime strategy and combat, but also of other crucial aspects of France's war, from mutinies and mail censorship to medical services, railways and weapons development.
Your Death Would Be Mine by
Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. With Paul in the army from 1914 through 1919, they were forced to conduct their marriage mostly by correspondence. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war. Civilians and combatants alike maintained bonds of emotional commitment and suffered the inevitable miseries of extended absence. While under direct fire at Verdun, Paul wrote with equal intensity and poetic clarity of the brutality of battle and the dietary needs (as he understood them) of his pregnant wife. Marie, in turn, described the difficulties of working the family farm and caring for a sick infant, lamented the deaths of local men, and longed for the safe return of her husband. Through intimate avowals and careful observations, their letters reveal how war transformed their lives, reinforced their love, and permanently altered the character of rural France. Overwhelmed by one of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern age, Paul and Marie found solace in family and strength in passion. Theirs is a human story of loneliness and longing, fear in the face of death, and the consolations of love. Your Death Would Be Mine is a poignant tale of ordinary people coping with the trauma of war.
Flying for France by
An illustrate re-publication of an eye witness account of air combat against the Germans during World War I. James R. McConnell flew these missions as a sergeant-pilot in the American Escadrille. He received the Croix de Guerre with Palm for conspicuous bravery. McConnell's book inspired the 2006 movie Flyboys.
The World Remade by
After years of bitter debate, the United States declared war on Imperial Germany on April 6, 1917, plunging the country into the savage European conflict that would redraw the map of the continent-and the globe. The World Remadeis an engrossing chronicle of America's pivotal, still controversial intervention into World War I, encompassing the tumultuous politics and towering historical figures that defined the era and forged the future. When it declared war, the United States was the youngest of the major powers and militarily the weakest by far. On November 11, 1918, when the fighting stopped, it was not only the richest country on earth but the mightiest. With the mercurial, autocratic President Woodrow Wilson as a primary focus, G. J. Meyer takes readers from the heated deliberations over U.S. involvement, through the provocations and manipulations that drew us into the fight, to the battlefield itself and the shattering aftermath of the struggle. America's entry into the Great War helped make possible the defeat of Germany that had eluded Britain, France, Russia, and Italy in three and a half years of horrendous carnage. Victory, in turn, led to a peace treaty so ill-conceived, so vindictive, that the world was put on the road to an even bloodier confrontation a mere twenty years later. On the home front, Meyer recounts the break-up of traditional class structures, the rise of the progressive and labor movements, the wave of anti-German hysteria, and the explosive expansion of both the economy and federal power, including shocking suspensions of constitutional protections that planted the seeds of today's national security state. Here also are revealing portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert La Follette, Eugene Debs, and John J. oBlack Jacko Pershing, among others, as well as European leaders such as oWelsh Wizardo David Lloyd George of Britain, oTigero Georges Clemenceau of France, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Meyer interweaves the many strands of his story into a gripping narrative that casts new light on one of the darkest, most forgotten corners of U.S. history. In the grand tradition of his earlier work A World Undone-which centered on the European perspective-The World Remadeadds a new, uniquely American dimension to our understanding of the seminal conflict of the twentieth century. Praise for The World Remade o(G. J.) Meyer offers wonderful insights into many of the key players in this arresting saga . . . one that should be read to understand our emergence as a global power.o-Booklist (starred review) oMeyer gives a good sense of America's future at that negotiating table and Wilson's celebrated role at Versailles as the leader of the free world. . . . A refreshing look at this still-much-debated world debacle.o-Kirkus Reviews oCharacters come alive and the past seems near. . . . Meyer succe
“The Post-WWI U.S. Occupation of the Rhineland"Since 2017, Molly Bompane has served as curator of arms and ordnance at the Army Heritage Museum at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Bompane graduated George Washington University with a degree in archaeology, and spent 10 years as an archaeologist working for various cultural institutions and engineering firms specializing in cultural resource management.
In 2005, she and her husband left for Germany to work as civilians for the U.S. Army, where Bompane began her Army museum career at the 1st Armored Division Museum in Baumholder. While in Germany, she obtained her master of public administration from University of Maryland University College Europe. In 2007, she was hired as the curator of photography at USAHEC, and later became the chief of digital initiatives.
In 2012, she accepted the position of chief curator, U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR), and worked in Wiesbaden, Germany from 2013 to 2017. While working in Europe, she established an award-winning museum gallery and worked extensively to re-establish accountability of all of the historic property within USAREUR’s area of operation.
Jim McNally serves as the curator of military art at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, McNally served as a U.S. Army photographer in Vietnam and the Carlisle Barracks. He continued his studies at various institutions, including Kutztown University, Pratt Institute of New York, and the Whitney Museum of Art. In 1983, he was an art and design instructor in New York. Later that year he joined the U.S. Army War College as an artist, photographer and visual information manager.
