America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History by Margaret E. Wagner (review)

The year 2017 marks a century since the United States entered World War I, and this Library of Congress illustrated history seems to have been published to showcase the library's collection and to capitalize on that anniversary. The book is a richly illustrated work that is, at its core, an admixture of military and political history. Although Margaret E. Wagner's work also includes stories that reflect the social, cultural, and even popular trends of the times, her main focus is politicians, presidents, and military actions.

America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History is 294 pages long, not including the notes, and there are more than two hundred illustrations scattered throughout the four chapters. The illustrations include photographs of people, places, and events, sheet music, maps, wartime propaganda posters, magazine covers, artwork, programs for events such as the 1912 political conventions, reproduced pages of letters and diaries, and even a photograph of a Taft League button and ribbon. Although photographs and other visual material culture can be used as historical evidence, the number of images in the book seems excessive. It is not clear, for example, why there are three illustrations relating to the Titanic in the book when one would suffice. There are also interspersed in the book one-page synopses of some of the major battles, starting with the first battle of the Marne early in the war and ending with the battle of the Somme. These sidebars do not continue for the battles after the United States entered the war. Instead, military actions are covered in the main body of the text.

After a brief introduction by David M. Kennedy, author of Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980), the book begins with a prologue. This prologue takes a meandering stroll through some of the context and events that shaped the United States in the years right before World War I. Wagner covers the Panama Canal, the Titanic, jazz, baseball, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, William Jennings Bryan, and Henry Ford and the rise of the automobile, and she gives an account of Woodrow Wilson's rise to the presidency. Chapter 1 explores America in the first few months after the war began in Europe. Chapter 2, "January 1916–January 1917: 'He Kept Us Out of War,'" examines politics and preparedness in 1916. These chapters make up half the book. Chapter 3 examines the United States' entry into the war and the subsequent months of fighting. Chapter 4 takes us from 1918 to peace.

As this description suggests, America and the Great War is a wide-ranging, sometimes overly detailed, descriptive history rather than a contribution to the historiographical conversation about World War I and American society. While there are well-meaning attempts to be inclusive—Wagner includes some material about African Americans' experiences and the woman suffrage movement in the discussion about the war—the book covers so much ground that it lacks focus. Historians looking to find a text with which to teach about World War I and American society would be better served by considering ChadL. Williams's Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill, 2010) or Christopher Capozzola's Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York, 2008). Wagner's book seems more likely to appeal to the general public.