By Ronald Schaffer

After such conflicts as global struggle II, Vietnam, and now the Persian Gulf, the 1st international conflict turns out , nearly historical occasion. It inspires pictures of trenches, horse-drawn wagons, and outdated wide-brimmed helmets--a clash towards the Civil battle than to our personal time. It rarely turns out an American struggle in any respect, contemplating we fought for scarcely over a 12 months in a essentially ecu fight. yet, as Ronald Schaffer recounts during this attention-grabbing new booklet, the good conflict wrought a dramatic revolution in the US, wrenching a various, unregulated, nineteenth-century society into the fashionable age. starting from the Oval place of work to company boardroom, from the farmyard to the battlefield, America within the nice War information a state reshaped via the calls for of overall struggle. Schaffer indicates how the Wilson management used persuasion, manipulation, direct keep watch over, and the cooperation of personal industries and companies to mobilize a freewheeling, individualist nation. the outcome used to be a war-welfare country, implementing the government on nearly each element of yank lifestyles. He describes the way it unfold propaganda, enforced censorship, and stifled dissent. Political radicals, spiritual pacifists, German-Americans, even typical those who voiced sincere doubts in regards to the struggle suffered arrest and imprisonment. the govt prolonged its keep watch over over many of the nation's fiscal lifestyles via a sequence of latest agencies--largely jam-packed with managers from inner most company, who used their new positions to put off pageant and safe different own and company profits. Schaffer additionally information the efforts of students, scientists, employees, girls, African- american citizens, and of social, scientific, and ethical reformers, to take advantage of the struggle to increase their very own agendas while they contributed to the force for victory. and never the least very important is his account of the way infantrymen reacted to the truth of war--both on the entrance traces and on the rear--revealing what introduced the doughboys to the battlefield, and the way they went via not just horror and disillusionment yet felt a fervent patriotism to boot. many of the upheavals Schaffer describes have been fleeting--as obvious within the millions of ladies who needed to go away their wartime jobs while the men got here home--but others intended everlasting switch and set precedents for such destiny courses because the New Deal. by way of displaying how American existence might by no means be a similar back after the Armistice, America within the nice War lays a brand new origin for figuring out either the 1st global struggle and twentieth-century the US.