The Great War in America

by Garrett Peck

Overview

The Great War’s bitter outcome left the experience largely overlooked and forgotten in American history. This timely book is a reexamination of America’s first global experience as we commemorate WWI's centennial. The U.S. steered clear of the Great War for more than two years, but President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly led the divided country into the conflict with the goal of making the world “safe for democracy.” The country assumed a global role for the first time and attempted to build the foundations for world peace, only to witness the experience go badly awry and it retreated into isolationism.The Great War was the first continent-wide conflagration in a century, and it drew much of the world into its fire. By the end, four empires and their royal houses had fallen, communism was unleashed, the map of the Middle East was redrawn, and the United States emerged as a global power—only to withdraw from the world’s stage.The United States was disillusioned with what it achieved in the earlier war and withdrew into itself. Americans have tried to forget about it ever since. The Great War in America presents an opportunity to reexamine the country’s role on the global stage and the tremendous political and social changes that overtook the nation because of the war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681779447
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	12/04/2018
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Garrett Peck, the author of six books, is an American historian who serves on the advisory council of the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C. He has lectured at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the National Museum of American History, and the Smithsonian Institution. He lives in Arlington, Virginia. Please visit his website at www.garrettpeck.com.

Editorial Reviews

10/29/2018
Peck’s workmanlike volume, which examines America’s role in WWI and subsequent events, often reads like a textbook. Peck produces a faithful, conventional chronology of President Woodrow Wilson’s trajectory from seeking “peace without victory” to joining the war. A heavy emphasis on Wilson’s personality and speeches, with little depth or illumination of American life beyond what happened in Washington or soldiers’ experiences, makes this more of a political biography than the comprehensive history it’s packaged as. The account of Wilson’s prickly, often arrogant idealism at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference is detailed, though, and the argument that Wilson’s call for a Democratic Congress provoked lasting domestic political enmity is insightful. One exception to the Wilson focus is Peck’s exploration of American belligerency among a large portion of the U.S. population with German heritage. His accounts of famed columnist H.L. Mencken’s pro-German writings and other Americans of German descent reflect a population mobilized by government propaganda and media reports (for example, that German-Americans were planning to attack American cities) to, among other things, rename frankfurters “hot dogs” and sauerkraut “liberty cabbage.” Passages on labor, leftist politics, the government’s stifling of dissent, women’s suffrage, and the dire state of race relations cover the facts, but have a bolted-on quality. This account fails to give life to a period whose events still affect the U.S. 100 years later. Photos. Agent: Tom Miller, Carol Mann Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Peck's book reminds us that Whitman is all around us. Whitman's Washington years overall provide an engaging read that reminds us that in this area, we are uniquely surrounded and suffused with the history of our nation.

Tom Sherwood - WNBC/Current Newspapers [previous praise for Garrett Peck]

The Potomac River has shaped history. It's also an awfully nice place to go for a hike. Both these aspects of the river are explored in [Peck's] new book.

Huffington Post [previous praise for Garrett Peck]

Peck's compact book is an immensely readable account. His affection for his subject shines through the book.

Washington Independent Review of Books [previous praise for Garrett Peck]

The Great War in America plumbs the decision of Woodrow Wilson to send American soldiers into the nightmare of trench warfare during the latter 19 months of World War I and how winning the peace created the inevitability of World War II.

Providence Journal

Peck’s pointillist picture of America on the home front will be sure to interest World War I buffs. He has much to say about war bonds and War Gardens, anti-German hysteria and the deplorable suppression of civil liberties. He also follows the doughboys to Belgium and France, where they discover the French fry but shell shock, too.

Wall Street Journal

The story traces America’s journey from geopolitical isolation to engagement and back to a more committed isolation — a retrenchment that, like Woodrow Wilson, Peck considers a mistake. Along the way, Peck shares plenty of details worthy of their own histories.

Washington Post

2018-09-11

A new history of World War I, viewed through the lens of America, where it "was an enormously contentious issue."

Peck (Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.: The Civil War and America's Great Poet, 2015, etc.) denies the biographical bent of his book, but Woodrow Wilson figured massively in the avoidance, eventual entrance, and especially the disastrous results of the war. One-third of America's population was first- or second-generation immigrants from the belligerent nations. Many disliked England or Germany, but seemingly everyone loved France, and they were the beleaguered nation. Other than the Navy, the American armed forces were in no shape to fight any war, let alone one thousands of miles away. The debate about whether to enter continued for more than two years. Ultimately, the U.S. decided to enter due to Germany's unrestricted U-boat warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram inviting Mexico to invade. Wilson first assumed a lofty position of arbiter trying to end the war without success. After American entry, he trampled on civil liberties, censored mail, and forbade Germans from owning guns or approaching military facilities. He stifled freedom of speech and basic civil liberties with the Sedition Act, Espionage Act, and Trading with the Enemy Act. American troops were young, poorly trained, and poorly armed. Gen. John Pershing insisted that his doughboys would not be co-opted, but the French and English had counted on incorporating that army into their own. Pershing also insisted on training for open warfare rather than the established trench warfare. The Battle of Château-Thierry put that idea to rest as Americans were mowed down by German machine guns. Furthermore, Wilson's rigid Fourteen Points caused more problems than solutions. The worst road blocks were Wilson's presence in Paris and his insistence that the League of Nations be included in the punitive, catastrophic Treaty of Versailles, but that's another book. Here, Peck proves a reliable guide to "a nation that was rapidly growing up—and yet not mature enough to accept its global responsibilities."

Students of 20th-century American and European history will enjoy this American view of the war and its long-term consequences.

Kirkus Reviews