In his 1919 novel The Man Nobody Knew, Holworthy Hall introduced readers to Richard Morgan, a fictional American soldier who […]
“There’s Only One Way This War Ends”: New Ways of Telling a Familiar Story in Sam Mendes’s 1917
In the spring of 1917, the German Army was recouping from enormous losses suffered at the Somme, Verdun, and in […]
Complicating the Canon of the First World War: A Review of Ellen La Motte’s Backwash of War, edited by Cynthia Wachtell
Think back on any syllabi of the First World War and the literature represented in it. For me, those titles […]
A Woman Who Wrote About War: Recovering Ellen N. La Motte’s The Backwash of War
I love the old American spiritual “Down by the Riverside.” In fact, my first book borrows its title, War No […]
“Considerable Grief”: Dead Bodies, Mortuary Science, and Repatriation after the Great War
In September 1919, Mary McKenney was forced to relive the horrors of her husband Arthur’s death. Sergeant Arthur McKenney was […]
Colorizing and Fictionalizing the Past: A Review of Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old
Five years ago, the Imperial War Museum in London contacted Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) and tasked […]
Quacks, Alternative Medicine, and the U.S. Army in the First World War
During the First World War, the Surgeon General received numerous pitches for miraculous cures for sick and wounded American soldiers. […]
Bearing the Brunt of Their Father’s Service: Ex-Soldiers and Child Murder, 1914-1935
In May 2011, British Lance Corporal Liam Culverhouse assaulted his seven-week-old daughter, resulting in severe brain damage and fractures to […]
“Everything Seems Wrong:” The Postwar Struggles of One Female Veteran of the First World War
Around the world, ceremonies, public art installations, concerts, lectures, and educational events are commemorating the fallen of the First World […]
Truly Ambitious Women: Women Chiropractors and World War I
In the turn-of-the-century United States, women were among the first chiropractors. In a period when established medical schools barred women […]
