March 1917 On the brink of war and revolution
Book - 2017
"We are provincials no longer," declared Woodrow Wilson on March 5, 1917, at his second inauguration. He spoke on the eve of America's entrance into World War I, just as Russia teetered between autocracy and democracy. In the face of turmoil in Europe, Wilson was determined to move America away from the isolationism that had defined the nation's foreign policy and to embrace an active role in shaping world affairs. Just ten days later, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne, ending a three-centuries-long dynasty and plunging his country into a new era of uncertainty, ultimately paving the way for the creation of a Soviet empire. Within a few short weeks, at Wilson's urging, Congress voted to declare war on Ge...rmany, asserting the United States' new role as a global power and its commitment to spreading American ideals abroad. Yet at home it remained a Jim Crow nation, and African Americans had their own struggle to pursue. American women were agitating for the vote and a greater role in society, and labor strife was rampant. As a consequence of the war that followed, the United States and Russia were to endure a century of wariness and hostility that flickers and flares to this day. This book reexamines these tumultuous events and their consequences in a compelling new analysis. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary Russian and American diaries, memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper accounts, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Will Englund examines the dreams of that year's warriors, pacifists, activists, revolutionaries, and reactionaries, and creates a highly detailed and textured account of the month that transformed the world's greatest nations.--From book jacket.
- Subjects
- Published
-
New York :
W.W. Norton & Company
[2017]
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Edition
- First edition
- Physical Description
- x, 387 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [331]-364) and index.
- ISBN
- 9780393292084
- Notes on the Text
- Chapter 1. "Go! Go! Go!"
- Chapter 2. "A Crime Against Civilization"
- Chapter 3. "Rich Earth, Rotting Leaves"
- Chapter 4. "You Fellows Are In for It"
- Chapter 5. "We Have Had to Push, and Push, and Push"
- Chapter 6. "People Think It Will Be Very Bloody"
- Chapter 7. "A Twilight Zone"
- Chapter 8. "No, Sir, Boss"
- Chapter 9. "A Pleasant Air of Verisimilitude"
- Chapter 10. "We Are Sitting on a Volcano"
- Chapter 11. "Cossacks, Riding Up and Down"
- Chapter 12. "Happier Days for All Humanity"
- Chapter 13. "Nothing to Lose but Their Miserable Lives"
- Chapter 14. "The Great Liberal Leader of the World"
- Chapter 15. "It Might Be All Right for You to Have Your Little Pocket Gun"
- Chapter 16. "Like a River at Flood"
- Chapter 17. "To Scold an Earthquake"
- Chapter 18. "Reeked with Patriotism"
- Chapter 19. "A Mending of Their Troubles"
- Chapter 20. "The Lid Is Kept Screwed Down"
- Chapter 21. "When the Man-World Is Mad for War"
- Chapter 22. "History Will Count You Right"
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Image Credits
- Index
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review