This true contemporary account of an American nurse's horrific and sometimes bizarre experiences while serving at a French battlefield hospital near Soissons during World War I has poignant layers which even the often naive author did not see. "As our camion drove through the chateau gate we could see that the grounds were covered with what looked like sleeping men." That is just her own introduction to the unit, housed in what was once a country estate, and soon she was standing hours on end treating friend and enemy alike, facing harrowing hyperreality with aplomb. Shirley Millard is throughout a willing reporter of her fascinating perspective on war, youth, loss, and love -- and always slapdash surgery and gallows camaraderie, inside a MASH unit before there was M*A*S*H. And before antibiotics, it is painfully clear. But she is also an unwitting reporter of so much more. The modern reader sees truths and wrongs that Shirley fails to experience herself, some at the time and too many upon rested reflection. Even some of the pronouns she uses reveal herself and the understory more than she ever realized. The book compels attention not only on the level on which she wrote it, which would be enough to bring crashing home this forgotten war, but also on levels hidden to her. Either way the insights pierce through, as when the young French doctor sums up war: "La gloire, la gloire! Bah! C'est de la merde!" He is a hero too, but has his own incongruous scenes later, just in his smoking habits alone. This collection of diary entries and later flashbacks may be the second greatest personal account of World War I, behind that by the much more self-aware Erich Remarque (though readers here may find themselves drawn into the lack of awareness as much as the account itself). Yet this book seems to have been lost in time and the crush of later events. As Time reviewed it in 1936, "Spare, simply written diary of a young, red-haired U.S. volunteer nurse in French hospitals near the front lines of 1918, in which romantic interludes heighten rather than ease a grisly atmosphere." It is that, but there is a lot more to it. And much of the writing is deeper than that, and certainly crisp and evocative in prose, even if some of the depth is more for the reader than the author. Includes penetrating new Foreword by law professor Elizabeth Townsend Gard, who studied the genre as part of her Ph.D. research in History at UCLA. The original book, and its incongruities and twists revealed by Townsend Gard, will stick with you. Previously only available as a rare book, now returned to its place in poignant history. This book, though listed as "trade" or could be read by college adults, will have as its principal audience the general reader and young adults. It would be an excellent, fairly brief book to assign to classes in High School and possibly Middle School. Although some of its scenes are stark and upsetting, and one would be cautioned to have YAs read it much as would be true of the candor of All Quiet on the Western Front, it has no other aspects which would make it inappropriate for minors and allows excellent discussions of war, class, race, nationalism, medicine, unsung women in war, foreshadowing and subtext, and many other themes that the author herself did not mean to raise. In other words, since the writer speaks on one level, and does not realize the other levels she touches, it would help to develop readers' critical skills to share their opinions about what she is missing in her own text. And in the process there will be no concern that the book would be inappropriate for YAs except that some of the medical and casualty moments are, of course, brutal. Also available in ebook and digital formats.

Women Heroes of World War I brings to life the brave exploits of 16 women from around the world who served their countries at a time when most of them didn’t even have the right to vote. Readers meet 17-year-old Frenchwoman Emilienne Moreau, who assisted the Allies as a guide and set up a first-aid post in her home; Russian peasant Maria Bochkareva, who joined the Imperial Russian Army, was twice wounded in battle and decorated for bravery, and created and led the all-women combat unit the Women’s Battalion of Death; and American journalist Madeleine Zabriskie Doty, who risked her life to travel twice to Germany during the war. Resented, watched, and pursued by spies, she was determined to report back the truth. These and other suspense-filled stories of daring girls and women from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, Belgium, Romania, and Australia are told through the use of engaging narrative, dialogue, direct quotes, and document and diary excerpts. Introductory material opens each section to provide solid historical context, and each profile includes informative sidebars and “Learn More” lists of relevant books and websites, making this a fabulous resource for students, teachers, parents, libraries, and homeschoolers. Kathryn J. Atwood is the author of Women Heroes of World War II and editor of Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent. She has contributed to War, Literature, and the Arts, PopMatters.com, Midwest Book Review, and Women’s Independent Press. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago.

With the centennial of the First World War rapidly approaching, historian and bibliographer James T. Controvich offers in The United States in World War I: A Bibliographic Guide the most comprehensive, up-to-date reference bibliography yet published. Organized by subject, this bibliography includes the full range of sources: vintage publications of the time, books, pamphlets, periodical titles, theses, dissertations, and archival sources held by federal and state organizations, as well as those in public and private hands, including historical societies and museums. As Controvich’s bibliographic accounting makes clear, there were many facets of World War I that remain virtually unknown to this day. Throughout, Controvich’s bibliography tracks the primary sources that tell each of these stories—and many others besides—during this tense period in American history. Each entry lists the author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, and page count as well as descriptive information concerning illustrations, plates, ports, maps, diagrams, and plans. The armed forces section carries additional information on rosters, awards, citations, and killed and wounded in action lists. The United States in World War I: A Bibliographic Guide is an ideal research tool for students and scholars of World War I and American history.

Caring for the wounded of the First World War was tough and challenging work, demanding extensive knowledge, technical skill, and high levels of commitment. Although allied nurses were admired in their own time for their altruism and courage, their image was distorted by the lens of popular mythology. They came to be seen as self-sacrificing heroines, romantic foils to the male combatant and doctors' handmaidens, rather than being appreciated as trained professionals performing significant work in their own right. Christine Hallett challenges these myths to reveal the true story of allied nursing in the First World War — one which is both more complex and more absorbing. Drawing upon evidence from archives across the world, Veiled Warriors offers a compelling account of nurses' wartime experiences and a clear appraisal of their work and its contribution to the allied cause between 1914 and 1918, on both the Western and the Eastern Fronts. Nurses believed they were involved in a multi-layered battle. Primarily, they were fighting for the lives of their patients on the 'second battlefield' of casualty clearing stations, transports, and military hospitals. Beyond this, they were an integral component of the allied military machine, putting their own lives at risk in field hospitals close to the front lines, on board hospital ships vulnerable to enemy submarine attack, and in base hospitals subject to heavy bombardment. As working women in a sometimes hostile, chauvinistic world, allied nurses were also fighting to gain recognition for their profession and political rights for their sex. For them, military nursing might help to win not only the war itself, but also a more powerful voice for women in the post-war world.

This volume is the result of a long commitment of the online journal DEP: Deportate, esuli, profughe to the themes of women pacifists’ thought and activism in the 1900s. The volume is a collection of contributions centred around three main themes. The first part, “Living War: Women’s Experiences during the War”, brings together first-hand accounts from women’s lives as they face the horrors of war, drawn mainly from original sources such as diaries, letters, memoirs and writings. The second, “Thinking Peace: Feminist Thought and Activism”, explores the lives and thought of several key women activists who challenged inequalities and sought to create new opportunities for women, contributing to the definition of a transnational culture of peace. The final section, “International Relations: Toward Future World Peace”, examines the work of a group of women who saw the outbreak of the First World War and the emergence of an international women’s movement for peace as an opportunity to act for their personal emancipation, and, in some cases, for a different idea of politics. The volume fills a notable gap in international history studies, providing a selection of contributions from little-known European contexts such as Italy, Poland, and Austria. The presence and contribution of African-American women, which has been neglected in the history of women’s pacifism, is also explored. Particular attention is given to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and to the International Congress of Women, held in The Hague in 1915.

Almost three-quarters of a million British soldiers lost their lives during the First World War, and many more were incapacitated by their wounds, leaving behind a generation of women who, raised to see marriage as "the crown and joy of woman's life," suddenly discovered that they were left without an escort to life's great feast. Drawing upon a wealth of moving memoirs, Singled Out tells the inspiring stories of these women: the student weeping for a lost world as the Armistice bells pealed, the socialite who dedicated her life to resurrecting the ancient past after her soldier love was killed, the Bradford mill girl whose campaign to better the lot of the "War spinsters" was to make her a public figure--and many others who, deprived of their traditional roles, reinvented themselves into something better. Tracing their fates, Nicholson shows that these women did indeed harbor secret sadness, and many of them yearned for the comforts forever denied them--physical intimacy, the closeness of a loving relationship, and children. Some just endured, but others challenged the conventions, fought the system, and found fulfillment outside of marriage. From the mill-girl turned activist to the debutante turned archeologist, from the first woman stockbroker to the "business girls" and the Miss Jean Brodies, this book memorializes a generation of young women who were forced, by four of the bloodiest years in human history, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity, and their future happiness. Indeed, Singled Out pays homage to this remarkable generation of women who, changed by war, in turn would change society.