World War I

Overshadowed by the so-called Good War that followed, the Great War-the First World War-captured the imagination of American writers both while the conflict was underway and during the decades that followed. As these authors struggled and, at times, fought with one another to define the war's elusive meaning, they produced a body of short fiction astonishing in its range of styles and themes. Some of the richest of these short stories, originally published in long-forgotten magazines and books, have remained lost-until now. The first collection of its kind, World War I in American Fiction brings together 26 stories to present a fuller picture of the war's immediate impact on American culture and its subsequent, deeply contested memory-highlighting the lingering effects of the war on veterans, women, and African Americans-and takes the reader from the contested skies over the Western Front to the influenza-ravaged American home front. Book jacket.