Letters from the Front
1898–1945
Edited by Michael E. Stevens
A collection of powerful and revealing letters from Wisconsinites who served their country during three major wars—offering a vivid picture of wartime and of a transformative period in our history.
192 pages, 6 x 9, 46 b&w photos
Paperback: $15.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-268-1
Publication Date: 12/19/1992
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Description
Between 1898 and 1945, the United States engaged in three major conflicts across the globe: the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. Over the course of those wars, millions of Wisconsinites lent their skills, their expertise, and for all-too-many, their lives to the cause. Most were “ordinary” people, uprooted from farms, factories, and offices, who took part in extraordinary events. In Letters from the Front, sixty-two men and women from Wisconsin who served their country in these wars share their first-hand experiences through letters home, offering an immediacy often not found in conventional histories.
This vivid social history explores how war changed the lives of everyday people and reveals the emotions they felt in uniform, in remote outposts, in combat, and in prison camps. For these citizen-soldiers, military service often represented their first real venture away from home, and the military itself constituted a foreign culture. Their letters provide a history of adaptation to military life; they also reflect the changes that occurred over the half-century encompassing these conflicts, an era of great technological innovation—and one in which America’s vision of itself also changed as it attained the status of a great world power.
Author Bios
Michael E. Stevens
Michael E. Stevens is the author or editor of nearly thirty articles and more than a dozen books. He earned his PhD in American history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is Wisconsin State Historian Emeritus. He lives in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.
Letters from the Front
1898–1945
Edited by Michael E. Stevens
192 pages, 6 x 9, 46 b&w photos
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