David Seitz’s World War I, Mass Death, and the Birth of the Modern US Soldier: A Rhetorical History vividly demonstrates how a multiplicity of discourses intersect in the moment when a public memory takes shape. Marshalling the forces of historiography, textual analysis, visual rhetoric, and ethnography, Seitz’s genealogical exploration adroitly explores how the ideograph of “the US soldier as a global force for good” emerged from the material and rhetorical battlefields of World War I. His analysis illustrates how such a transformative ideograph is at once the production of historical forces, governmental rhetoric, and vernacular responses to efforts to shape the understanding of an historical moment.

Roger C. Aden, Ohio University

Scholarly in the breadth of its sources and the depth of analysis, David Seitz’s study of the World War I soldier yields details unavailable elsewhere, yet his dynamic writing and visceral descriptions guarantee its accessibility to a wide variety of readers. Seitz builds our understanding of “the modern, universal, sacrificial soldier” quite literally from the ground up, through searing images of the blood-soaked fields of Europe and the mangled bodies of the war dead. He deftly leads the reader through the United States’ abrupt turn from pacifist to belligerent, the resulting repression of dissent, and the ideological struggle between the government and grieving families over the bodies of the fallen. This compelling and sweeping study is particularly welcome during this centennial of World War I and will set a new standard in our understanding of the war and its commemoration.

Cheryl Jorgensen-Earp, Lynchburg College

This beautifully written book documents a transformation in American perceptions of warfare driven by a rhetorical struggle over the status and meaning of the body of the fallen soldier. Drawing on a diverse array of texts including wartime letters, diary entries, novels, poems, and news reports, Seitz crafts a vivid, at times cinematic portrait of life and death during the “Great War.” The book explores the way officials exercised physical and symbolic control over the corpses of American soldiers (often against the explicit wishes of their loved ones) in order to cultivate a sentimental rhetoric of national mourning and to consecrate U.S. territorial interests and influence abroad. The book should be read widely by rhetoricians, scholars of twentieth century American history, and those interested in understanding an important origin point for our contemporary conception of warfare and soldierly sacrifice.

Michael P. Vicaro, Penn State Greater Allegheny