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Over Here: The First World War and American Society
The Great War of 1914-1918 confronted the United States with one of the most wrenching crises in the nation's history. It also left a residue of disruption and disillusion that spawned an even more ruinous conflict scarcely a generation later.
Over Here is the single-most comprehensive discussion of the impact of World War I on American society. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new afterword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David M. Kennedy, that explains his reasons for writing the original edition as well as his opinions on the legacy of Wilsonian idealism, most recently reflected in President George W. Bush's national security strategy. More than a chronicle of the war years, Over Here uses the record of America's experience in the Great War as a prism through which to view early twentieth century American society. The ways in which America mobilized for the war, chose to fight it, and then went about the business of enshrining it in memory all indicate important aspects of enduring American character. An American history classic, Over Here reflects on a society's struggle with the pains of war, and offers trenchant insights into the birth of modern America.
Over Here is the single-most comprehensive discussion of the impact of World War I on American society. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new afterword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David M. Kennedy, that explains his reasons for writing the original edition as well as his opinions on the legacy of Wilsonian idealism, most recently reflected in President George W. Bush's national security strategy. More than a chronicle of the war years, Over Here uses the record of America's experience in the Great War as a prism through which to view early twentieth century American society. The ways in which America mobilized for the war, chose to fight it, and then went about the business of enshrining it in memory all indicate important aspects of enduring American character. An American history classic, Over Here reflects on a society's struggle with the pains of war, and offers trenchant insights into the birth of modern America.
428 pages, Paperback
First published October 23, 1980
66 people are currently reading
746 people want to read
About the author
David M. Kennedy
291 books66 followersDavid Michael Kennedy is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning historian specializing in American history. He is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University[1] and the Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic analysis and cultural analysis with social history and political history.
Kennedy is responsible for the recent editions of the popular history textbook The American Pageant. He is also the current editor of the Oxford History of United States series. This position was held previously by C. Vann Woodward. Earlier in his career, Kennedy won the Bancroft Prize for his Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970) and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for World War I, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980). He won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for History for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999).
Kennedy is responsible for the recent editions of the popular history textbook The American Pageant. He is also the current editor of the Oxford History of United States series. This position was held previously by C. Vann Woodward. Earlier in his career, Kennedy won the Bancroft Prize for his Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (1970) and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for World War I, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980). He won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for History for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999).
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August 5, 2017
This might be longer than my usual reviews. I hope I don't fall asleep.
Given the subtitle, I expected this book to be about American society during the First World War. It is both less and more than that. There really isn't much about how the war affected the daily lives of people. One very brief sentence alluded to women rolling Red Cross bandages and such. Most of this is about the political maneuverings. That sentence even to me makes this sound boring boring boring. It isn't.
America had been ticking along since the Civil War, slowly moving itself out of its rural economy and becoming an industrial economy. By 1914, it was third behind Britain and Germany in exports. Without the war, the global economy might have stayed just like that for the foreseeable future. However, the war did happen and America pivoted. Four topics in particular I want to recall, should I care to re-read these comments in the future.
The federal government was infinitely smaller in the years before the war. The feds now gather statistics of activity which we take for granted. This was not only not being done, but apparently no one had considered it needed doing. We grew wheat, but how much? We made cars, but how many? We had factories, but how much capacity was used/not used. The feds began to gather such statistics. Additionally, parts were not standardized. For example, today you can buy tires that are sold by size, not by the type of car you drive. That type of standardization came about because of our entry into The War, mostly because the feds required goods in large quantities, and with standardization multiple manufacturers could produce parts that were inter-changeable.
Prior to the war, we were a debtor nation. Our debts were small, true - nothing like today. Also, before the war, the world monetary exchange was British Sterling. But the Brits needed financial support, the US was able to provide it, and for at least a time we became a creditor nation. Obviously, we did not stay out of the war forever, but this quote reveals some of the thinking going on in Washington before our entry.
The final topic I want to remember - and to me most fascinating - is that of American literature. I had thought I might skip USA: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money as something that might take more concentration and energy than I was probably willing to invest. Today, I'm not so sure but what I'll look for the earliest opportunity.
I may read a few more nonfiction books on the war, but mostly I will be pursuing additional knowledge through fiction. Still, I am very grateful to the WWI group here at Goodreads for making me aware of this book, and that my challenge group provided me the exact opportunity and motivation to actually settle down and read it. Because of my enduring interesting in The Great War, I'll give this 5 stars, but I doubt it is for everyone.
Given the subtitle, I expected this book to be about American society during the First World War. It is both less and more than that. There really isn't much about how the war affected the daily lives of people. One very brief sentence alluded to women rolling Red Cross bandages and such. Most of this is about the political maneuverings. That sentence even to me makes this sound boring boring boring. It isn't.
America had been ticking along since the Civil War, slowly moving itself out of its rural economy and becoming an industrial economy. By 1914, it was third behind Britain and Germany in exports. Without the war, the global economy might have stayed just like that for the foreseeable future. However, the war did happen and America pivoted. Four topics in particular I want to recall, should I care to re-read these comments in the future.
The federal government was infinitely smaller in the years before the war. The feds now gather statistics of activity which we take for granted. This was not only not being done, but apparently no one had considered it needed doing. We grew wheat, but how much? We made cars, but how many? We had factories, but how much capacity was used/not used. The feds began to gather such statistics. Additionally, parts were not standardized. For example, today you can buy tires that are sold by size, not by the type of car you drive. That type of standardization came about because of our entry into The War, mostly because the feds required goods in large quantities, and with standardization multiple manufacturers could produce parts that were inter-changeable.
Prior to the war, we were a debtor nation. Our debts were small, true - nothing like today. Also, before the war, the world monetary exchange was British Sterling. But the Brits needed financial support, the US was able to provide it, and for at least a time we became a creditor nation. Obviously, we did not stay out of the war forever, but this quote reveals some of the thinking going on in Washington before our entry.
But there was perhaps a deeper reason [Secretary of the Treasury] McAdoo's mind turned initially for inspiration to the history of the American Civil War. He seemed to act, as did so many of his colleagues, from an almost instinctual sense of the uniqueness of American society, a uniqueness so deep and durable as to render the distant American past more pertinent to the American present than the experiences of foreign peoples, no matter how modern. McAdoo further expressed this sense of a special American relation to what was popularly called the "European War" when he later explained that the United States had made massive loans to the Allies, so that they might "gain victories before American troops could be trained and put into action. The dollars that we sent through these loans to Europe were, in effect, substitutes for American soldiers, and the extent to which we were able to save the lives of the young men of America would be measured by the extent to which we could make operative, quickly and effectively, the credits the Allies needed to purchase supplies in American markets."For some years Labor had been trying to gain a foothold, largely without success. Even without official contracts, workers had gone on strike. In fact, there had been a strike against the railroads, and, because it was so vital to the economic health of the nation, strikes against the railroads became illegal. But there were skirmishes in other industries as well, and after we entered the war, the labor supply shrank in such a way that wage gains finally became not only possible but a necessity. Still, organized labor sought for the right to collective bargaining. Corporations balked. They looked for other sources of cheap labor, but the war caused Europe to have its own labor shortages. They looked to the American south and the Negro. (The accepted term of the day.) I have not read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, but I assume this is the beginning of that great migration.
The final topic I want to remember - and to me most fascinating - is that of American literature. I had thought I might skip USA: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money as something that might take more concentration and energy than I was probably willing to invest. Today, I'm not so sure but what I'll look for the earliest opportunity.
The postwar writers of disillusionment protested less against the war itself than against a way of seeing and describing the war. As writers, they naturally focused their fire on the verbal conceits of the older generation. They insisted over and over again that the war experience — and by extension all modern human experience — could not be contained in the stilted shibboleths and pieties of the traditional culture. This was the field of energy — its poles being two separate cultures, even two distinct systems of speech — across which arced the most kinetic prose of the postwar writers.Kennedy continues with examples of E.E. Cummings, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Joseph Heller, Pynchon, and then
But to point to this assault on traditional language as evidence of "disillusionment," and there let analysis rest, is to miss something important about postwar American literature. The war assuredly disabused many writers of their illusions about the romance and nobility of warfare. But for the younger generation of authors that came to the fore after 1918, the war was also a a fabulously useful, if expensively purchased, metaphor for the corruption of the culture they had under siege. Somehow it provided them with an infusion of creative adrenalin, an access of energy that set off the 1920s as one of the most remarkable periods in the history of American fiction. To recognize this is to be forced to recognize the curious fact that it was terribly convenient, even necessary, that the war was not entirely a "success." The literature of the 1920s would be impossible to imagine if Wilson had triumphed at Paris, and had progressive expectations been widely fulfilled at home.As can be seen from the quotes above, this is not non-fiction that reads like fiction. Still, to me, it is far above being textbookish. It is heavily footnoted, but, thankfully, the notes are true footnotes, being at the bottom of the page, rather than at the back in an Appendix. I could readily see when turning the page whether I wanted to access them. And there were footnotes I wanted to read. Kennedy occasionally explained further the point he was making. These added, rather than detracted, from the text. Most, however, were for those who plan to spend considerable time researching.
I may read a few more nonfiction books on the war, but mostly I will be pursuing additional knowledge through fiction. Still, I am very grateful to the WWI group here at Goodreads for making me aware of this book, and that my challenge group provided me the exact opportunity and motivation to actually settle down and read it. Because of my enduring interesting in The Great War, I'll give this 5 stars, but I doubt it is for everyone.
November 22, 2025
Readers seeking to learn about the United States during the Second World War usually do not have far to look, as bookshelves groan with works about nearly every conceivable aspect of the conflict and its aftermath. By comparison, the American experience during the First World War has been largely neglected. For all of the scope of the war and its impact on the nation, thanks in part to the attention given to its successor conflict far fewer books have been written about it, which has caused the “Great War” to recede in the popular imagination as a consequence.
Of those that have been written, David Kennedy’s book is easily the best of the bunch. Though it’s not the first overview of the subject or the most up-to-date one anymore, it still stands out today for the breadth of its coverage and the interpretive lens the author brings to his subject. In it he surveys the span of the nation’s experience during the war, from the mobilization of public opinion to the contribution made by American forces in the trenches of France. While much of this is based on the preexisting literature of the war, Kennedy also conducted research in archives in both the United States and Great Britain to buttress his analysis and round out his account, which bolsters the value of his work over that of many of his counterparts.
At the heart of Kennedy’s book is his analysis is the question of how the United States was transformed by the war. This transformation was a jarring one, as even though Americans spent three years observing the conflict raging in Europe the nation was poorly prepared to enter it. To compensate, Americans embraced participation with the fervor of the converted. While a few brave souls questioned the necessity of participation, they were drowned out by those who saw commitment to war as a demonstration of patriotism. Those doubters found themselves hounded out of the public sphere, their voices silenced while their bodies were locked up behind bars. Yet enthusiasm couldn’t compensate for the amateurish approach towards organization, as Congress and the president refused to learn from the lessons of their new British and French allies as to what was required to wage the “total war” the U.S. now found itself fighting.
This was demonstrated on the battlefield as well. The commanding general of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), John J. Pershing, was convinced that American vigor would succeed where the exhausted British and French had failed. Eschewing the hard-won lessons of the previous three years of war, Pershing insisted that American troops employ tactics similar to the ones that had led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of troops, with predictable results. Nevertheless, Kennedy credits the sheep mass of AEF and their attrition of German forces as important contributions to the allies’ victory over Germany in November, 1918, one that left the United States in an unexpectedly dominant position in world affairs.
Americans were eager to retreat to prewar pursuits as soon as the Armistice was declared, yet they were unable to escape the changes wrought by the war. While Kennedy does not address in his original text the debates over Wilsonianism and America’s role in the world that were sparked by their involvement, he makes up for this in an afterword written for the 25th anniversary edition. Though this final part lacks some of the vigor of the original text, this is more offset by the author’s deeper and more mature understanding of his subject. That such an edition was produced reflects the continuing value of Kennedy’s book as a history of America’s involvement in the First World War. While his book should be supplemented with more recent studies (such as Lynn Dumenil’s The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I) that examine in detail aspects of the war that Kennedy addresses only briefly, it remains an excellent starting point for anyone new to the subject.
Of those that have been written, David Kennedy’s book is easily the best of the bunch. Though it’s not the first overview of the subject or the most up-to-date one anymore, it still stands out today for the breadth of its coverage and the interpretive lens the author brings to his subject. In it he surveys the span of the nation’s experience during the war, from the mobilization of public opinion to the contribution made by American forces in the trenches of France. While much of this is based on the preexisting literature of the war, Kennedy also conducted research in archives in both the United States and Great Britain to buttress his analysis and round out his account, which bolsters the value of his work over that of many of his counterparts.
At the heart of Kennedy’s book is his analysis is the question of how the United States was transformed by the war. This transformation was a jarring one, as even though Americans spent three years observing the conflict raging in Europe the nation was poorly prepared to enter it. To compensate, Americans embraced participation with the fervor of the converted. While a few brave souls questioned the necessity of participation, they were drowned out by those who saw commitment to war as a demonstration of patriotism. Those doubters found themselves hounded out of the public sphere, their voices silenced while their bodies were locked up behind bars. Yet enthusiasm couldn’t compensate for the amateurish approach towards organization, as Congress and the president refused to learn from the lessons of their new British and French allies as to what was required to wage the “total war” the U.S. now found itself fighting.
This was demonstrated on the battlefield as well. The commanding general of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), John J. Pershing, was convinced that American vigor would succeed where the exhausted British and French had failed. Eschewing the hard-won lessons of the previous three years of war, Pershing insisted that American troops employ tactics similar to the ones that had led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of troops, with predictable results. Nevertheless, Kennedy credits the sheep mass of AEF and their attrition of German forces as important contributions to the allies’ victory over Germany in November, 1918, one that left the United States in an unexpectedly dominant position in world affairs.
Americans were eager to retreat to prewar pursuits as soon as the Armistice was declared, yet they were unable to escape the changes wrought by the war. While Kennedy does not address in his original text the debates over Wilsonianism and America’s role in the world that were sparked by their involvement, he makes up for this in an afterword written for the 25th anniversary edition. Though this final part lacks some of the vigor of the original text, this is more offset by the author’s deeper and more mature understanding of his subject. That such an edition was produced reflects the continuing value of Kennedy’s book as a history of America’s involvement in the First World War. While his book should be supplemented with more recent studies (such as Lynn Dumenil’s The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I) that examine in detail aspects of the war that Kennedy addresses only briefly, it remains an excellent starting point for anyone new to the subject.
November 17, 2011
A beautiful book that lives up to its claim to be a comprehensive study of the American character as seen through the lens of the First World War. While attempts to divine the "American character" typically lead to metaphysical maunderings or abstract speculations, Kennedy loads this book with fascinating narratives which seem to make his points without much authorial emphasis. He allows only a few choice pieces of analysis to illuminate subtler aspects of his story.
For instance, Kennedy notes how the famously weak American state confronted the war not so much by expanding its powers as by enlisting the mass opinion of Americans, and allowing popular pressure to exert the power that martial force exerted in European societies. President Wilson himself was the perfect vehicle for this since he distrusted formal political systems and often took his arguments, for both reform and war, directly "to the people" in far-flung speaking tours. His Attorney General Thomas Gregory frankly said that America was a country "governed by public opinion." So most war agencies, for all their seeming influence, had little legal power, yet they succeeded in having immense effects on the Nation. The Committee on Public Information, the famous propaganda arm of the war, was led by the hyperkinetic reformer George Creel, who bragged that "We had no authority. Yet the American idea [for distributing "information" as opposed to force] worked. And it worked better than any European law." Likewise the War Industries Board, led by former Wall Street speculator Bernard Baruch, tried to organize American industry for war with almost no authority, but he used his Board to permanently reshape capitalism and "assist in cultivating the public taste for rational types of commodities," by, among other things, limiting the variety of products available. Treasury Secretary McAdoo sold federal bonds by, as he said in his memoirs, "capitliz[ing] the emotion of the people." The famous Liberty Bond drives were an American substitute for European financial repression.
The subtle effects of this propagandistic drive was to blur public and private authority, as shown by the growth of the American Protective League (APL), a pseudo-official group armed by the federal government with "badges" and almost free reign to arrest, search homes without a warrant, and occasionally loot the populace at large. Vigilantism became rampant, as demonstrated by the lynching of Robert Prager, a man living near Saint Louis who had committed no discernible offense except for being German. The jury acquitted the mob of "patriotic murder."
Kennedy also notes how the Wilson government further blurred the distinction between public and private through use of the word "service." The term itself was a useful halfway house that denoted both public obligation and personal autonomy, and was used to gild even such obviously forceful measures as the universal draft (here called "the Selective Service" for the first time.)
The end result of all this propaganda and vigilantism was the disillusionment of the reformers who had earlier followed Wilson into war. While the progressives at "The New Republic" honestly stated in 1917 that the war should be used "as a pretext to foist innovations upon the country," by 1922 Walter Lippman, an editor of the magazine, could say in his book "Public Opinion" that his propaganda work in the war convinced him that people saw only "stereotypes" and had to be managed by a "specialized class." The original appeal to the people in the end created a permanent distrust of them. The rise of an elitist left beckoned.
The book goes far beyond these cultural strains, and looks at everything from the operation of Food and Fuel Administrations to the experience of the American Expeditionary Force in France to a fascinating discussion of the international ramifications of the shipping industry. It's a book that has permanently changed the way I look at twentieth century America, and it deserves all the praise it has received.
For instance, Kennedy notes how the famously weak American state confronted the war not so much by expanding its powers as by enlisting the mass opinion of Americans, and allowing popular pressure to exert the power that martial force exerted in European societies. President Wilson himself was the perfect vehicle for this since he distrusted formal political systems and often took his arguments, for both reform and war, directly "to the people" in far-flung speaking tours. His Attorney General Thomas Gregory frankly said that America was a country "governed by public opinion." So most war agencies, for all their seeming influence, had little legal power, yet they succeeded in having immense effects on the Nation. The Committee on Public Information, the famous propaganda arm of the war, was led by the hyperkinetic reformer George Creel, who bragged that "We had no authority. Yet the American idea [for distributing "information" as opposed to force] worked. And it worked better than any European law." Likewise the War Industries Board, led by former Wall Street speculator Bernard Baruch, tried to organize American industry for war with almost no authority, but he used his Board to permanently reshape capitalism and "assist in cultivating the public taste for rational types of commodities," by, among other things, limiting the variety of products available. Treasury Secretary McAdoo sold federal bonds by, as he said in his memoirs, "capitliz[ing] the emotion of the people." The famous Liberty Bond drives were an American substitute for European financial repression.
The subtle effects of this propagandistic drive was to blur public and private authority, as shown by the growth of the American Protective League (APL), a pseudo-official group armed by the federal government with "badges" and almost free reign to arrest, search homes without a warrant, and occasionally loot the populace at large. Vigilantism became rampant, as demonstrated by the lynching of Robert Prager, a man living near Saint Louis who had committed no discernible offense except for being German. The jury acquitted the mob of "patriotic murder."
Kennedy also notes how the Wilson government further blurred the distinction between public and private through use of the word "service." The term itself was a useful halfway house that denoted both public obligation and personal autonomy, and was used to gild even such obviously forceful measures as the universal draft (here called "the Selective Service" for the first time.)
The end result of all this propaganda and vigilantism was the disillusionment of the reformers who had earlier followed Wilson into war. While the progressives at "The New Republic" honestly stated in 1917 that the war should be used "as a pretext to foist innovations upon the country," by 1922 Walter Lippman, an editor of the magazine, could say in his book "Public Opinion" that his propaganda work in the war convinced him that people saw only "stereotypes" and had to be managed by a "specialized class." The original appeal to the people in the end created a permanent distrust of them. The rise of an elitist left beckoned.
The book goes far beyond these cultural strains, and looks at everything from the operation of Food and Fuel Administrations to the experience of the American Expeditionary Force in France to a fascinating discussion of the international ramifications of the shipping industry. It's a book that has permanently changed the way I look at twentieth century America, and it deserves all the praise it has received.
April 19, 2021
Over Here: The First World War and American Society by David M. Kennedy presents one of the most comprehensive analyses and discussion of the impact of World War I on American society. The Great War of 1914-1918 confronted the United States with one of the most wrenching crises in the nation's history about the impact of World War I on American society. More than a history of the war years, Over Here uses the record of America's experience in the Great War as a means to view early twentieth century American society. It looks at the average Americans attitudes and the politics of going to war or staying out. The author looks at how America mobilized for the war, chose to fight it, and then went about the business of enshrining it into memory indicating important aspects of American character. An American history classic, Over Here reflects on a society's struggle with the pains of war, and offers trenchant insights into the birth of modern America.
August 31, 2014
A. Synopsis: This book discusses the events in the USA during their 19 month participation in WWI. The war is used as a window into American society. The main theme is the departure of the USA from isolation. The ended 150 of diplomatic practice. The American involvement in this war served as a prologue to WWII.
B. Prologue: Spring 1917
1. Examination of the war from 1914-17 in Germany, France, England, Russia, America. German submarine warfare, Zimmerman telegram and the US enters.
C. The war for the American mind
1. More than any other country that fought in the war, the Wilson administration had to cultivate and manufacture public opinion favorable to the war effort. “The deliberate mobilization of the emotions and ideas.” Wilson classified the war as “a war for democracy, a war to end war, and a crusade.” Educational courses presented the war as a life or death struggle between democracy and autocracy. This was a key theme of wartime propaganda. 100% American was a key phrase and German-Americans suffered suspicion and vigilantism. Abrams v. United States was a case against the “subversive” activities of immigrants. Holmes first used the phrase “clear and present danger” to condemn the Sedition Act.
2. One of the causalities of war for the American mind was the Progressive soul. Dewey’s belief that the world was a “plastic place” that those of the enlightened mind could mold was destroyed. The utopian social philosophy of the Progressives ended. The reason is because the war had revealed on the domestic and international front forces that could destroy the fragile forces of Progressive men.
D. The political economy of war: The home front
1. The war forced both government and business to act on an unprecidently large and integrated scale. The study of wartime mobilization can disclose much about a nations lifestyle. One of the main problems was the relation of the government to the economy. The government would assume greater economic authority and public power would touch private enterprise in many new ways. But, the Wilson administration avoided unilateral exercises of government power. Instead Wilson turned to volantaristic means of persuasion, propaganda, and the fueling of patriotic fires. The great hysteria caused by the war (red hunt, German-American suspicion) lay partly in the impulse to shun formal power at all costs. The war demonstrated that voluntarism had its perils, but it nevertheless became a salient feature of 20th century American life.
E. “You’re in the army now”
1. A radical departure from the voluntarism in America was Wilson’s conscription of a military force. Despite the difficulty and opposition of impressment it was mostly successful. There was a great deal of fear in training black men to fight and use weapons. A black officer training program was established. Blacks made up 13% of the draftees. Some men resisted conscription for reasons of conscience. The Army undertook a campaign against sexual vice that was to have a substantial influence on social life. The Army cooperated less willingly on another social experiment--intelligence testing.
F. Over there--and back
1. The Doughboys actually had more peacetime than wartime in Europe. They were impressed with the Age of Europe. Many wrote home as a tourist might, commenting on churches and other old buildings. The worst part of war was the impersonality of it. The Doughboys wrote of being “shell shocked” and unsure about when death world come. But, these negative notes were relatively rare.
2. The postwar literary writers often wrote of the war with great disillusionment. It was a very different story than one gets when reading the letters of the Doughboys. This gulf separating the masses from the intellectuals was one of the lasting legacies of the war.
G. Armistice and aftermath
1. Throughout the war there was much talk of the “reconstruction” that would follow armistice. Labor leaders such as Samuel Gompers believed that the war effort might be able to forge permanent gains for labor. This was not the case as most of the labor efforts failed.
2. There was a great black exodus northward during the war. Black leaders saw the war as a time to submerge individual demands. Blacks hoped that their support for the war would allow them other material gains. One of the greatest opportunities was that northern industrial labor opened up to them. Though still discriminated against by the trade unions, and held in suspicion by white neighbors, blacks were able to gain a toehold in Northern industry.
3. Wilson harnessed the spirit of the war to support women’s suffrage. Women’s employment during the war was limited and brief.
4. The early 1920s saw a Great Red Hunt and anti-radical hysteria
H. The political economy of war: The international dimension
1. The intensification of the American bid for world economic dominance was one of the main consequences of the war. Wilson favored this development. But, Wilson favored political involvement in the international order, and hesitated to fully integrate economic resources into that order. This resulted in a kind of diplomatic paralysis. Although American foreign investment was huge in the 1920s it was not enough to offset the difficulties which the economy encountered. While America was vaulted close to the position of world economic leadership, they did not have the skills or wisdom to handle it as effectively as did Britain in the 19th.
B. Prologue: Spring 1917
1. Examination of the war from 1914-17 in Germany, France, England, Russia, America. German submarine warfare, Zimmerman telegram and the US enters.
C. The war for the American mind
1. More than any other country that fought in the war, the Wilson administration had to cultivate and manufacture public opinion favorable to the war effort. “The deliberate mobilization of the emotions and ideas.” Wilson classified the war as “a war for democracy, a war to end war, and a crusade.” Educational courses presented the war as a life or death struggle between democracy and autocracy. This was a key theme of wartime propaganda. 100% American was a key phrase and German-Americans suffered suspicion and vigilantism. Abrams v. United States was a case against the “subversive” activities of immigrants. Holmes first used the phrase “clear and present danger” to condemn the Sedition Act.
2. One of the causalities of war for the American mind was the Progressive soul. Dewey’s belief that the world was a “plastic place” that those of the enlightened mind could mold was destroyed. The utopian social philosophy of the Progressives ended. The reason is because the war had revealed on the domestic and international front forces that could destroy the fragile forces of Progressive men.
D. The political economy of war: The home front
1. The war forced both government and business to act on an unprecidently large and integrated scale. The study of wartime mobilization can disclose much about a nations lifestyle. One of the main problems was the relation of the government to the economy. The government would assume greater economic authority and public power would touch private enterprise in many new ways. But, the Wilson administration avoided unilateral exercises of government power. Instead Wilson turned to volantaristic means of persuasion, propaganda, and the fueling of patriotic fires. The great hysteria caused by the war (red hunt, German-American suspicion) lay partly in the impulse to shun formal power at all costs. The war demonstrated that voluntarism had its perils, but it nevertheless became a salient feature of 20th century American life.
E. “You’re in the army now”
1. A radical departure from the voluntarism in America was Wilson’s conscription of a military force. Despite the difficulty and opposition of impressment it was mostly successful. There was a great deal of fear in training black men to fight and use weapons. A black officer training program was established. Blacks made up 13% of the draftees. Some men resisted conscription for reasons of conscience. The Army undertook a campaign against sexual vice that was to have a substantial influence on social life. The Army cooperated less willingly on another social experiment--intelligence testing.
F. Over there--and back
1. The Doughboys actually had more peacetime than wartime in Europe. They were impressed with the Age of Europe. Many wrote home as a tourist might, commenting on churches and other old buildings. The worst part of war was the impersonality of it. The Doughboys wrote of being “shell shocked” and unsure about when death world come. But, these negative notes were relatively rare.
2. The postwar literary writers often wrote of the war with great disillusionment. It was a very different story than one gets when reading the letters of the Doughboys. This gulf separating the masses from the intellectuals was one of the lasting legacies of the war.
G. Armistice and aftermath
1. Throughout the war there was much talk of the “reconstruction” that would follow armistice. Labor leaders such as Samuel Gompers believed that the war effort might be able to forge permanent gains for labor. This was not the case as most of the labor efforts failed.
2. There was a great black exodus northward during the war. Black leaders saw the war as a time to submerge individual demands. Blacks hoped that their support for the war would allow them other material gains. One of the greatest opportunities was that northern industrial labor opened up to them. Though still discriminated against by the trade unions, and held in suspicion by white neighbors, blacks were able to gain a toehold in Northern industry.
3. Wilson harnessed the spirit of the war to support women’s suffrage. Women’s employment during the war was limited and brief.
4. The early 1920s saw a Great Red Hunt and anti-radical hysteria
H. The political economy of war: The international dimension
1. The intensification of the American bid for world economic dominance was one of the main consequences of the war. Wilson favored this development. But, Wilson favored political involvement in the international order, and hesitated to fully integrate economic resources into that order. This resulted in a kind of diplomatic paralysis. Although American foreign investment was huge in the 1920s it was not enough to offset the difficulties which the economy encountered. While America was vaulted close to the position of world economic leadership, they did not have the skills or wisdom to handle it as effectively as did Britain in the 19th.
October 22, 2025
BOOK REVIEW - Over Here, The First World War and American Society, by David M. Kennedy (10.22.25)
This is one of the finest studies of how World War I reshaped the United States—politically, economically, and culturally. The book is both a work of history and a meditation on the modern state’s reach. The title is a play on the patriotic propaganda song, “Over There” that was meant to galvanize American men to enlist. Kennedy’s argument is that America’s brief but intense participation in the Great War transformed the nation far beyond the battlefield, laying the foundation for the expansive federal power and civic expectations of the twentieth century.
The book is less about the war and more about the policies that the war generated. It traces how Woodrow Wilson’s call to make the world “safe for democracy” collided with the realities of mass mobilization, propaganda, and suppression of dissent. The narrative follows the government’s unprecedented efforts to direct industry, regulate speech, and unify a diverse population under the banner of national purpose. Through agencies like the Committee on Public Information and the War Industries Board, the federal government acquired powers and habits that persisted long after the armistice.
Kennedy explores the complex interplay of idealism and coercion. The Espionage and Sedition Acts criminalized criticism of the war effort, and thousands were jailed for words rather than deeds. At the same time, Wilson’s rhetoric of moral crusade and self-determination inspired reformers, women’s suffragists, and black leaders who sought to claim a fuller measure of citizenship. Kennedy shows that both impulses—liberation and repression—grew from the same soil of national mobilization.
Kennedy’s treatment of the war’s economic and social impact is masterful. He demonstrates how wartime centralization stimulated modern corporate capitalism, expanded organized labor’s reach, and altered relations between government and business. His chapters on the Red Scare and post-war disillusionment show the costs of idealistic overreach and the enduring fear of subversion that followed.
Kennedy neither condemns nor romanticizes Wilsonian America. He recognizes the nobility of purpose that drove the crusade for democracy, yet he is clear about the intolerance and overconfidence it bred. The result is a nuanced portrait of a nation learning the peril of conflating moral mission with military power.
Kennedy does not overlook the paradoxes embodied in Woodrow Wilson himself. He notes, for instance, that Wilson permitted a private White House screening of The Birth of a Nation—the first film ever shown there—a work steeped in virulent racism that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. That decision, Kennedy observes, underscores the moral blind spot of a president who could champion democracy abroad while tolerating, and at times defending, racial injustice at home. It is a small but telling moment in Kennedy’s larger argument: the ideals that animated America’s crusade were often compromised by the prejudices and exclusions that still marked its society. In summary this is a richly documented account of America’s wartime transformation—less a story of battles than of the ideas, powers, and contradictions that remade a republic.
Quote:
“The war accelerated the transformation of the American state from the lean guardian of laissez-faire into the muscular manager of a mobilized economy and a mobilized people. In its new guise, the state entered daily life in ways inconceivable before 1917, and it would never entirely withdraw.”
“The great crusade that had promised to redeem the world ended by unsettling America’s own soul. Out of the exaltation of Wilson’s rhetoric came both the impulse toward moral leadership and the machinery of conformity, both the dream of universal brotherhood and the habit of suspicion. The contradictions of the twentieth century were born over here.”
This is one of the finest studies of how World War I reshaped the United States—politically, economically, and culturally. The book is both a work of history and a meditation on the modern state’s reach. The title is a play on the patriotic propaganda song, “Over There” that was meant to galvanize American men to enlist. Kennedy’s argument is that America’s brief but intense participation in the Great War transformed the nation far beyond the battlefield, laying the foundation for the expansive federal power and civic expectations of the twentieth century.
The book is less about the war and more about the policies that the war generated. It traces how Woodrow Wilson’s call to make the world “safe for democracy” collided with the realities of mass mobilization, propaganda, and suppression of dissent. The narrative follows the government’s unprecedented efforts to direct industry, regulate speech, and unify a diverse population under the banner of national purpose. Through agencies like the Committee on Public Information and the War Industries Board, the federal government acquired powers and habits that persisted long after the armistice.
Kennedy explores the complex interplay of idealism and coercion. The Espionage and Sedition Acts criminalized criticism of the war effort, and thousands were jailed for words rather than deeds. At the same time, Wilson’s rhetoric of moral crusade and self-determination inspired reformers, women’s suffragists, and black leaders who sought to claim a fuller measure of citizenship. Kennedy shows that both impulses—liberation and repression—grew from the same soil of national mobilization.
Kennedy’s treatment of the war’s economic and social impact is masterful. He demonstrates how wartime centralization stimulated modern corporate capitalism, expanded organized labor’s reach, and altered relations between government and business. His chapters on the Red Scare and post-war disillusionment show the costs of idealistic overreach and the enduring fear of subversion that followed.
Kennedy neither condemns nor romanticizes Wilsonian America. He recognizes the nobility of purpose that drove the crusade for democracy, yet he is clear about the intolerance and overconfidence it bred. The result is a nuanced portrait of a nation learning the peril of conflating moral mission with military power.
Kennedy does not overlook the paradoxes embodied in Woodrow Wilson himself. He notes, for instance, that Wilson permitted a private White House screening of The Birth of a Nation—the first film ever shown there—a work steeped in virulent racism that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. That decision, Kennedy observes, underscores the moral blind spot of a president who could champion democracy abroad while tolerating, and at times defending, racial injustice at home. It is a small but telling moment in Kennedy’s larger argument: the ideals that animated America’s crusade were often compromised by the prejudices and exclusions that still marked its society. In summary this is a richly documented account of America’s wartime transformation—less a story of battles than of the ideas, powers, and contradictions that remade a republic.
Quote:
“The war accelerated the transformation of the American state from the lean guardian of laissez-faire into the muscular manager of a mobilized economy and a mobilized people. In its new guise, the state entered daily life in ways inconceivable before 1917, and it would never entirely withdraw.”
“The great crusade that had promised to redeem the world ended by unsettling America’s own soul. Out of the exaltation of Wilson’s rhetoric came both the impulse toward moral leadership and the machinery of conformity, both the dream of universal brotherhood and the habit of suspicion. The contradictions of the twentieth century were born over here.”
January 29, 2020
This is mostly a story of the home front during WWI. Kennedy points out that the dilemma whether to participate or not in WWI led to a split in the progressives and liberal factions in the U.S. One of my favorite lines in the book is the following; “The preparedness debate that erupted in late 1915 impaled the progressive left on the horns of that dilemma, where it writhed for more than a year.” The U.S. had to depart from isolation, abandon former diplomatic practices to compete with Europe like never before. Economically we had to mobilize like never before. One point made by Kennedy was that our economic power was not used effectively during the war nor later. The economic mobilization for the war involved persuasion and manipulation of the American psyche using mass entertainment and advertising. Economic reforms enacted were progressive income taxes, industrial standardization, a compilation of data stressing efficiency of output ratio to resources used, and the creation of a farm bureau using a public officer to organize private producers. However, there was massive collusion between government and private enterprise thus expanding the role of government in the economy. Kennedy also explains the concern leaders had of a class struggle if labor should became too strong. Also he describes the trade conflict after the war with England, particularly over control of trade in Asia and South America. The best part of the book is the “Afterword” in which Kennedy makes the case that the Wilson foreign policy based on idealism carried us through the Cold War and was the reason for US involvement in the Vietnam War. A good read by a solid historian.
August 12, 2022
Very well written and researched account of multiple facades of the effects of the first World War on multiple aspects of American society at the time. It takes a detailed look at the political stances of multiple sub-parties within Republicans and Democrats, and even discusses the rising third party of the Socialists led by Eugene Debs. From paranoia and propaganda being the "war for the American mind," to President Wilson's attempts to first avoid the war, and then maintain American freedom in the war instead of amalgamating their soldiers (sending American soldiers to fight under the command of British and/or French officers). We see the maddening partisanism that plagued the nation during this time, similar to how it does in our current era. Henry Cabot Lodge, though a titan of U.S. Senatorial History was someone who would be wholly despised if he were alive today due to his purely partisan plays on issues of war and the economy, and his love for corrupt businessmen such as H.C. Frick. The book gives you details about economics; how much things cost, how effective taxes were at funding the war, other suggestions at the time, pros and cons, etc. This book was awesome!
October 2, 2017
(Audiobook) This older work offers in-depth analysis of the World War I years, with the main emphasis on how America dealt with World War I, before, during and after the fighting. It is a complex history, one that is not exactly in line with America, once committed to war, united to overcome differences to defeat an adversary. American participation in the war is not particularly popular for many reasons, from concern about maintaining America's long-standing isolationism to angst about what will happen to America's economic and political interests, to concerns about maintaining American racial order. Even when American forces deployed to Europe, the concerns and issues that plagued America still haunted in the theater. American racial policies had significant impacts on how US forces were deployed and how other Allies were to treat them. Perhaps if America's involvement in the war lasted more than 20 months, then maybe American attitudes change, especially in the near apathy that the American public has in memorializing this war, especially compared to WWII, The Revolutionary War, the Civil War and Vietnam. The work does trend towards a dry, academic prose, but there is a lot of engaging facts and stories to cover all areas, to include military, economic, social, and political. While this work was composed in the post-Vietnam war era, the issues and concerns are relevant today in 2017 as they were in the early 1980s, and especially, in 1917. The reader is solid, but this might be a better book to physically read as opposed to audiobook format. Worth the time to read.
May 19, 2019
The title is misleading. It is really a standard political economy analysis and has very little to do with society or culture, so if that's what you're looking for, look elsewhere.
It also almost entirely omits any discussion of women's experiences and accomplishments during this time period (not totally surprising as this is unfortunately fairly common within standard political economy). Women, to the extent that they are mentioned at all, are discussed in relation to their position as nurses or grieving mothers, even though during WWI American women served in the Navy, worked on the front lines in the signal corps, and oh yeah, fought for a monumental political achievement: suffrage for half the American population who had previously been denied it (women's suffrage gets approximately a paragraph in this ~400 page book).
What this book does well: the discussion of WW1 from the perspective of a "doughboy": chapters "You're in the Army Now" and "Over There and Back" are comprehensive, detailed, and come much closer to providing insight into the lives of real people during the time period compared with the rest of the book's focus on high politics.
It also almost entirely omits any discussion of women's experiences and accomplishments during this time period (not totally surprising as this is unfortunately fairly common within standard political economy). Women, to the extent that they are mentioned at all, are discussed in relation to their position as nurses or grieving mothers, even though during WWI American women served in the Navy, worked on the front lines in the signal corps, and oh yeah, fought for a monumental political achievement: suffrage for half the American population who had previously been denied it (women's suffrage gets approximately a paragraph in this ~400 page book).
What this book does well: the discussion of WW1 from the perspective of a "doughboy": chapters "You're in the Army Now" and "Over There and Back" are comprehensive, detailed, and come much closer to providing insight into the lives of real people during the time period compared with the rest of the book's focus on high politics.
March 28, 2021
This book provides the valuable history of what might have been, rather than the usual summary of what eventually happened. At home, American involvement in WWI led to a rise in nationalism and suppression of progressive movements. This is not surprising. But it was interesting to know of the hopes that different groups had: that WWI would give Black Americans more opportunities, or that the federal government would take over major industries and embrace a more socialist ideology.
In general, this book provides a good balance to the usual War History, which concerns itself with high government decisions and troop movements. What happened to civilians left at home? What hopes and fears animated their daily lives?
In general, this book provides a good balance to the usual War History, which concerns itself with high government decisions and troop movements. What happened to civilians left at home? What hopes and fears animated their daily lives?
February 18, 2019
Thomas Woodrow Frankenstein.
This is a great book, to which it is impossible to do justice in a review of this length. It includes many little known angles, such as the acquisition of thousands of German patents, sold at knock-down prices to US chemical and other industries, Also, there is fascinating stuff on the coal shortage in the winter of 1917/18, which led to all factories east of the Mississippi being closed down for four days so that trains could continue to run. This recalls some of the problems of the blockaded Central Powers - though far less excusable. Also how the cutting off of immigration led to the vast influx of southern blacks to northern cities, and the Berlin Wall-ish attempts of many southern communities to hold on to their cheap labour.
However, by far the best part is the first section, which recounts the grim tale of the war's impact on civil liberties. Kennedy gives many examples of the horrors, both by mob violence and what passed for process of law, befalling anyone showing the slightest flicker of dissent. They are too numerous to recount, but one is an absolute must. In 1917 film producer Robert Goldstein made a movie about the American Revolution, entitled "The Spirit of '76". A safely patriotic theme, one might suppose. But no. Prosecuted under the Espionage Act, Goldstein (a German Jew, so of course targeted by two separate classes of bigot) was sentenced to ten years in prison - because his film showed the Redcoats being nasty to Americans, at a time when Britain was an ally, so was held to undermine the war effort. Good ol' Mr Wilson graciously commuted the sentence - to three years. What comment is necessary? As a Brit, I almost fell out of my chair on discovering this gem.
Socialist Eugene Debs, of course, was even less lucky than Goldstein. For making a passing reference to the draft, in a speech on a totally different matter, he also got ten years, which Wilson refused to commute even after the war.
Nor is the criticism all "in hindsight". See these contemporary remarks from various of his (formerly) fellow Progressives. Amos Pinchot observed in 1918 that the President had "put his enemies in office and his friends in jail".
George Creel (ironically given his own major role in the process) summed up the Democratic Party's defeat in the 1918 elections for Congress, telling Wilson "All the radical or liberal friends of your anti-imperialist war policy were either silenced or intimidated. The Department of Justice and the Post Office were allowed to silence or intimidate them. There was no voice left to argue for your sort of peace. When we came to this election the reactionary Republicans had a clean record of anti-Hun imperialistic patriotism. Their opponents, your friends, were often either besmirched or obscured."
Oswald Garrison Willard (an old Wilsonian) regretted that "Wilson has made the great blunder of allowing his dull and narrow Postmaster-General, his narrow Attorney-General, all the other agencies under his control to suppress adequate discussion of the peace aims. . . At the very moment of his extremest trial, our liberal forces are by his own act scattered, silenced, disorganised, some in prison. If he loses his great fight for humanity, it will be because he was deliberately silent when freedom of speech and the right of conscience were struck down in America."
Predictably, organised labour soon fell victim to the times, with "obstruction of the war effort" a useful cover for strikebreaking. When Arizona copper miners dared to strike, the County sheriff tried to use troops against them. Failing in this, he "deputized" a 2000-strong armed posse and herded 1200 strikers onto a train to New Mexico, where they were left for two days in a sun-baked siding without food or water. Seeking to return, they were kept out of the mines by armed patrols, and some even rearrested when trying to report for the Draft. Indictments of the vigilantes were quashed in Federal Court, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court.
The 1920s, in short, did not begin in 1920 but in 1917, and it was not Lodge or Harding, but Wilson himself who began them. The lynch mobs of 1917-18, and the 1920s Klansmen who succeeded them, may perhaps be excused as simple folk who "knew not what they did", but Wilson did know. An educated man steeped in American history and tradition, with his eyes wide open he destroyed the Progressive Era and betrayed everything for which he had previously stood. It recalls a line I once read in a novel, about a man "who spoke a dozen languages and used all of them to spout the same cruel nonsense" about the need to burn witches.
Indeed, it is a measure of how awful these four years were that at times the much maligned (and admittedly mediocre) Warren Harding comes over almost as a voice of reason. Because his administration was soon discredited by sordidness and corruption, it is easy to forget that in 1920 most Americans were glad to see him come. This book explains why. After 1917-21, he could pass for a breath of fresh air.
It was a cruel irony that Wilson should be destroyed by the very forces he unleashed, but not unjust. He was ground to powder, crushed like an insect under the jackboot of some goose-stepping storm trooper - but it was a jackboot of his own making. The end of his presidency was no doubt tragic, but he deserved every last thing that happened to him. Doctor Woodrow Frankenstein had been destroyed by a monster of his own creation.
As stated, I've come nowhere near doing full justice to this book. As I go over this review, I am haunted by the ghosts of all that I have left out. If you're remotely interested in the subject, it is a "must read".
April 10, 2015
An eye-opening read in terms of what I learned about the amount of federal power seized on account of the war, then retained afterward, affecting every area of socio-economic life. Came away from this book with an intense dislike of Woodrow Wilson, a self-important, sanctimonious prick. Not unlike the current White House occupant.
August 17, 2018
Well written, but it was focused on upper level politics and economics. Not what I was looking for in a book about American Society. Very useful for someone studying World War I.
December 7, 2019
The war at home was in some ways as gritty as that in Europe's battlefields. Historian David Kennedy has done a masterful job recreating the domestic dilemma of war in the Progressive Era: how to square its carnage and inhumanity with the high ethics required to justify it. The result was problematic and the issue has never been resolved. If war produced Bolshevism and Fascism elsewhere,in America it provoked the equivalent of "One Hundred Per Cent Americanism" that put the United States on the totalitarian brink. American bankers made billions loaning the Entente the wherewithal to fight, with American soldiers conveniently jumping in - as the other belligerants began tiring out - to pick up the pieces. Ironically, though the war could not have been won without fresh and ready US forces, American fighting was relatively minimal and even that supported by British supplies and logistics. America was then far from the military-industrial superpower now taken for granted.
But while Professor Kennedy has illuminated this period for us magnificently, I must take issue with his most cherished theme. The exceptionalism of America and this period are flatly contradicted by America's own history, which Professor Kennedy seems to have overlooked in staking his ground among fellow academics. Woodrow Wilson's "making the world safe for (American) democracy" was no new departure of the Progressive Era, but an echo of Wilson's own hero, Abraham Lincoln, who sought to make the Union "safe for freedom." (That Wilson also endorsed the revisionist film "Birth of a Nation" shows Progressivism's ambivalent nature.) Nor was Teddy Roosevelt's imperial realpolitik the "anomaly" Kennedy suggests. The Monroe Doctrine, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, "Manifest Destiny" - all were symptoms of the American conquering spirit before the Progressive Era. Roosevelt's bully hubris and Wilson's transcendental moralism were already firm American traditions and - as noted above - the results scarcely distinguishable from Europe in practice.
With said caveats, this is an excellent overview of a largely forgotten era and a surprising indicator of how little America has really changed, in character and deed.
But while Professor Kennedy has illuminated this period for us magnificently, I must take issue with his most cherished theme. The exceptionalism of America and this period are flatly contradicted by America's own history, which Professor Kennedy seems to have overlooked in staking his ground among fellow academics. Woodrow Wilson's "making the world safe for (American) democracy" was no new departure of the Progressive Era, but an echo of Wilson's own hero, Abraham Lincoln, who sought to make the Union "safe for freedom." (That Wilson also endorsed the revisionist film "Birth of a Nation" shows Progressivism's ambivalent nature.) Nor was Teddy Roosevelt's imperial realpolitik the "anomaly" Kennedy suggests. The Monroe Doctrine, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, "Manifest Destiny" - all were symptoms of the American conquering spirit before the Progressive Era. Roosevelt's bully hubris and Wilson's transcendental moralism were already firm American traditions and - as noted above - the results scarcely distinguishable from Europe in practice.
With said caveats, this is an excellent overview of a largely forgotten era and a surprising indicator of how little America has really changed, in character and deed.
November 25, 2017
Although the fighting was on the Western Front, World War I was lived Over Here. The American Experience in the Great War is the subject of David Kenney’s “Over Here".
America entered the War in April 1917 when Russia was in revolution, German solidarity was cracking, French armies were in mutiny, and Britain was in danger of starvation from unrestricted U-boat warfare.
In the United States the Progressive movement had been the vibrant political movement for over fifteen years and its proponents and opponents would exhaust themselves in war related struggles. The paths of collectivism and individualism would continue to diverge in decisions about the war. The individualists proposed volunteer units, while the draft, in which the government would select who would fight over there and who would stay over here and work, prevailed. Business was offered incentives to produce war materials rather than commanded to do so as in some other countries. Railroads were nationalized and Food Commissioner, Herbert Hoover, coaxed Americans to produce and conserve the food needed to feed the Allies. Dissenting voices were quieted by the Espionage and Sedition Acts in one of the greatest clashes between civil liberties and national mobilization.
For Americans the most lasting influences of the World War I did not occur on European battlefields but in domestic society and governmental halls. Author David M. Kennedy has skillfully crafted a tome that places World War I on a continuum of American history extending before and after the days of the guns. I recommend it to anyone interested in the impact of World War I on America.
America entered the War in April 1917 when Russia was in revolution, German solidarity was cracking, French armies were in mutiny, and Britain was in danger of starvation from unrestricted U-boat warfare.
In the United States the Progressive movement had been the vibrant political movement for over fifteen years and its proponents and opponents would exhaust themselves in war related struggles. The paths of collectivism and individualism would continue to diverge in decisions about the war. The individualists proposed volunteer units, while the draft, in which the government would select who would fight over there and who would stay over here and work, prevailed. Business was offered incentives to produce war materials rather than commanded to do so as in some other countries. Railroads were nationalized and Food Commissioner, Herbert Hoover, coaxed Americans to produce and conserve the food needed to feed the Allies. Dissenting voices were quieted by the Espionage and Sedition Acts in one of the greatest clashes between civil liberties and national mobilization.
For Americans the most lasting influences of the World War I did not occur on European battlefields but in domestic society and governmental halls. Author David M. Kennedy has skillfully crafted a tome that places World War I on a continuum of American history extending before and after the days of the guns. I recommend it to anyone interested in the impact of World War I on America.
May 1, 2021
What DID I think?
Well, it wasn't what I thought it would be. I was expecting more reminiscences and "snapshots" of U.S. society leading up to and during The Great War. I have an interest in the music of the first part of the 20th Century and in silent films. I don't recall what prompted me to buy this particular book, but no doubt it had to do with something from that menu. Maybe I saw a reference to the film 1917, which had a British slant, and I wanted to see how the U.S. fit into that narrative. I dunno.
Regardless, I found the book more scholarly, more dry, more politically-oriented than I was expecting. The stars were precisely because I was informed about people and events of which I was previously unaware. SO that was a plus. But the book would have been hugely helped with more graphics and photos of the characters and events. Who was George Creel? Thomas Gregory? Bernard Baruch? I'm not an especially visual learner, but photos could have helped give flesh and an implied personality to these who were merely names and actions. How about photos of union workers on strike, and a map where the strikes and unrest occurred? Of the contrasting conditions under which white and black soldiers trained and traveled? There was one -- count it, one -- map of a location where one segment of U.S. troops fought. Not nearly enough visual enhancement of this scholarly treatise.
In retrospect, that's not a surprise. The author is a Stanford professor. The book is the fruit of his research, and it's undoubtedly accurate within it's own confines. I was hoping for a book with more, um, personality.
Well, it wasn't what I thought it would be. I was expecting more reminiscences and "snapshots" of U.S. society leading up to and during The Great War. I have an interest in the music of the first part of the 20th Century and in silent films. I don't recall what prompted me to buy this particular book, but no doubt it had to do with something from that menu. Maybe I saw a reference to the film 1917, which had a British slant, and I wanted to see how the U.S. fit into that narrative. I dunno.
Regardless, I found the book more scholarly, more dry, more politically-oriented than I was expecting. The stars were precisely because I was informed about people and events of which I was previously unaware. SO that was a plus. But the book would have been hugely helped with more graphics and photos of the characters and events. Who was George Creel? Thomas Gregory? Bernard Baruch? I'm not an especially visual learner, but photos could have helped give flesh and an implied personality to these who were merely names and actions. How about photos of union workers on strike, and a map where the strikes and unrest occurred? Of the contrasting conditions under which white and black soldiers trained and traveled? There was one -- count it, one -- map of a location where one segment of U.S. troops fought. Not nearly enough visual enhancement of this scholarly treatise.
In retrospect, that's not a surprise. The author is a Stanford professor. The book is the fruit of his research, and it's undoubtedly accurate within it's own confines. I was hoping for a book with more, um, personality.
April 4, 2025
Very successful in what it sets out to do. It feels a little silly to laud a book for managing to thoroughly cover in four hundred pages a period of a mere nineteen months, but these were busy months after all. I very much recommend it to anyone who's not so interested in the operations of battle themselves but in what the war meant for American politics and economic evolution. I certainly feel I have a much better appreciation for how the United States managed to exploit the opportunities opened by the crisis in which the Old World powers found themselves (especially Britain, the commercial and financial heart of the world up to that time, and for a little while thereafter) as well as its inability to exploit them as fully or as prudently as they might have wished.
Some very original and thought-provoking conclusions in this work. Among them: "Given the deep-grained reluctance to exercise power in a straightforward, statutory, and necessarily coercive way, Wilson and his war managers turned instead to voluntaristic means, to persuasion, propaganda, and the purposeful fueling of patriotic fires. The sources of the 'hysteria' the war produced, so often condemned and so rarely explicated, lay partly in that very impulse to shun formal power at all costs. A direct line led from that attitude toward power to the deliberate mobilization of emotions in the methods of the Treasury, the Food Administration, and the War Industries Board. Americans, prizing the weakness of their ancient institutions, strove to maintain that holy debility in a time of crisis by substituting aroused passion for political authority." And I agree.
Some very original and thought-provoking conclusions in this work. Among them: "Given the deep-grained reluctance to exercise power in a straightforward, statutory, and necessarily coercive way, Wilson and his war managers turned instead to voluntaristic means, to persuasion, propaganda, and the purposeful fueling of patriotic fires. The sources of the 'hysteria' the war produced, so often condemned and so rarely explicated, lay partly in that very impulse to shun formal power at all costs. A direct line led from that attitude toward power to the deliberate mobilization of emotions in the methods of the Treasury, the Food Administration, and the War Industries Board. Americans, prizing the weakness of their ancient institutions, strove to maintain that holy debility in a time of crisis by substituting aroused passion for political authority." And I agree.
July 12, 2017
A terrific book.
He argues that "Americans went to war in 1917 not only against Germans in the fields of France but against each other at home. They entered on a deadly serious contest to determine the consequences of the crisis for the character of American economic, social, and political life." (41) The results were ambiguous -- advances in some areas and for some Americans, retreats in others for others. "The war came at a time of peculiarly intense disagreement about the principles of political economy that American society should embody. Though many hoped the war would finally lay that problem to rest, the conflict only demonstrated its intractable complexity and the relatively fixed equilibrium of the several forces arrayed around it." (137)
Progressivism shaped and was shaped (and devastated) by World War I. Many progressives embraced but were then disappointed and disillusioned by the war. (292)
He argues that the war was a pivot point in American history from a national government reluctant to exercise its coercive powers to one that embraced them, at least in some contexts. He argues that the commingling of the public and private sectors was "one of the chief structural effects of the crisis". (122) Nonetheless, he argues that the Wilson administration almost always preferred using private means rather than public ones in the economic realm. (334)
Throughout he argues that the Wilson administration manipulated the American public, whether through CPI propaganda or through Liberty Loan campaigns.
He argues that "Americans went to war in 1917 not only against Germans in the fields of France but against each other at home. They entered on a deadly serious contest to determine the consequences of the crisis for the character of American economic, social, and political life." (41) The results were ambiguous -- advances in some areas and for some Americans, retreats in others for others. "The war came at a time of peculiarly intense disagreement about the principles of political economy that American society should embody. Though many hoped the war would finally lay that problem to rest, the conflict only demonstrated its intractable complexity and the relatively fixed equilibrium of the several forces arrayed around it." (137)
Progressivism shaped and was shaped (and devastated) by World War I. Many progressives embraced but were then disappointed and disillusioned by the war. (292)
He argues that the war was a pivot point in American history from a national government reluctant to exercise its coercive powers to one that embraced them, at least in some contexts. He argues that the commingling of the public and private sectors was "one of the chief structural effects of the crisis". (122) Nonetheless, he argues that the Wilson administration almost always preferred using private means rather than public ones in the economic realm. (334)
Throughout he argues that the Wilson administration manipulated the American public, whether through CPI propaganda or through Liberty Loan campaigns.
March 4, 2018
David Kennedy's book Over Here takes a lose look at the way World War I affected American society. Some historians write for a popular audience, and their books tell a story in an engaging and accessible way. Other historians seem to be writing only for peers. Their books are well researched and detailed but can also be as dry as dust. Kennedy is somewhere in the middle. His book is definitely well-researched and thorough. It's also arranged somewhat topically within a rough chronological order. His vocabulary is a little too challenging to be aimed at a popular audience. However, Kennedy is a good writer and doesn't get bogged down in so many details that only a PhD student in history would enjoy it. If you are interested in World War I and already have some knowledge of the events of the war, you would probably enjoy Over Here. Kennedy describes how Wilson's lofty rhetoric swept progressives and labor into a pro-war stance, but the results were much more conservative than expected. Kennedy follows the standard view that Wilson was too naïve and idealistic in his hopes for the post-war world, but he also argues that Wilson shaped the way America thought of its role in world affairs for the next century. Over Here is definitely worth the time for people who like history.
November 13, 2018
"Over Here"’s diligent march through the war’s chronology, policy development by policy development, and its bird’s-eye, somewhat aloof perspective on the war call to mind William Leuchtenburg’s "Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal." Both books focus on the political and economic aspects of a tumultuous presidency (Wilson and FDR, respectively), more than cultural issues. David Kennedy is a more eloquent writer than Leuchtenburg, though, and better integrates material on race and gender, even if I would have liked additional material on those topics. "Over Here" is important because it captures the extent to which World War I reorganized American society, with the weakening of labor, the movement of African American civilians and soldiers to new locations, the attainment of women’s suffrage and a brief boost in female employment, and the strengthening of corporate trusts. By the war’s end, America was no longer isolated from global politics and was the creditor of Western Europe, yet Americans shunned the League of Nations. Economic involvement abroad mattered more than geopolitical dominance to much of the Republican and Democratic establishment. It is as if Americans wished to be in the world, but not of it, to paraphrase the Christian expression.
April 7, 2020
Over Here is a book about domestic and International markets in World War I. The effect of Woodrow Wilson in the beginning of the 20th century. I learned that Woodrow Wilson had a son in a law William Gibbs Macadoo who was treasury Secretary and first Administer of The Federal Railroad Administration. The communist beginning of the AFLCIO. T he book begins with Woodrow Wilson asking congress to declare war on Europe after Germany sank 2 American ships in 1917/. The book talks about the first peaceful draft. The bias against immigrants. The Committee for Public Information and a lot of changes in the beginning of the 20th century of an industrialist society. The first foreign war and the reaction of soldiers in the last part of war. I learned a lot from this book. This book sets the stage for American progress hi International relations and problems that still exist today. It changed writing fprever. This is the first time veterans wrote about was experiences. First hand accounts of the war. The beginning of International banks and major International trade. This book is an illumination of the early 20th century and International diplomacy that is a model for modern world.
July 4, 2024
This book covered a lot of ground. Because I’ve studied this era a bit, I found it really useful in making some connections. It’s an accessible book but it doesn’t necessarily make some of the deeper connections for you.
One thing that clicked for me here was in regard to the alien and sedition acts and anti-immigration, and how that influenced the great migration, a rise in racial violence, and economic opportunity for blacks. It’s really ironic.
I recommend pairing this with several books:
- The warmth of other suns on the great migration
- imbeciles on eugenics and racism in this era
- The internationalists on Kellogg Brian’s and wilsonian peace
- War is a Racket on the rise of the military industrial complex
-How propaganda became public relations on the shift from violence to propaganda against labor
- Taking the risk out of democracy same as above
- Manipulating the Masses on the rise of propaganda in WWI era
One thing that clicked for me here was in regard to the alien and sedition acts and anti-immigration, and how that influenced the great migration, a rise in racial violence, and economic opportunity for blacks. It’s really ironic.
I recommend pairing this with several books:
- The warmth of other suns on the great migration
- imbeciles on eugenics and racism in this era
- The internationalists on Kellogg Brian’s and wilsonian peace
- War is a Racket on the rise of the military industrial complex
-How propaganda became public relations on the shift from violence to propaganda against labor
- Taking the risk out of democracy same as above
- Manipulating the Masses on the rise of propaganda in WWI era
November 15, 2020
A strong book, all around. It covers a lot of American political development, especially including the Progressive movement, the resistance to foreign involvement, and labor relations/activism. I thought that it might treat changes for the average American--and it did, at times--but in the end, Kennedy made the point that the price paid by the U.S. for the war wasn't all that enormous. It was greater than anything attempted before, but with the war ending in 1918, rather than the feared/expected 1919, the changes afoot snapped back to prior patterns.
May 28, 2021
To start, I have trouble with a book that does not provide what its title promises. I expected the story of American society during WWI. What I got was the typical political buildup to the war, a chapter describing the American military in France (?), and then more political maneuvering after the armistice. I did learn things while reading this book, but that just rates an 'It's OK' in my book. Falsel advertising does matter. Mayhe it's the fault of the publisher and not the author, but that's not my problem.
September 27, 2023
I was disappointed overall. There were parts that were outstanding, parts with tedious detail and names, and parts that were educational. However, the writing style suggested to me that there was more than one writer. Some parts used unnecessary vocabulary and awkward syntax that made the chapter a chore to plow through. If you’re looking for granular details on this subject, this book is for you.
September 8, 2018
Kennedy offers a thoroughly researched "top down" look at WWI on the American home front. While he tends to get bogged down at times by his economic analysis, overall his scholarship is well written and would be a great read for anyone who wanted to study the economic, political, and social history of the United States before and during the Great War.
January 10, 2018
There is a lot of information and issues that I enjoyed learning, yet overall the presentation is “scholarly” – more, but not totally, a collection of facts than a binding story.
June 14, 2023
David Kennedy has two great accounts of the wartime home front in American history, for both WW1 and WW2.
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