[PDF] Too Proud To Fight eBook

Author : Patrick Baron Devlin
Publisher : New York : Oxford University Press
Page : 776 pages
File Size : 43,19 MB
Release : 1975
Category : History
ISBN :

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A massive study of how America got involved in World War I, seen primarily through the personality and policies of Woodrow Wilson.

Author : Steven T. Tom
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 15,52 MB
Release : 2019-09-20
Category : History
ISBN : 0811768104

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Five days after the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, American Kiffin Rockwell was on a ship headed for France. The United States would not join the war for nearly three years, but Rockwell believed it was time to fight. He joined the elite French Foreign Legion and was soon fighting in the trenches of the Western Front. A combat wound in 1915 rendered him unfit to fight on the ground, so Rockwell volunteered to fight in the air, becoming a charter member of the soon-to-be legendary Lafayette Escadrille, a fighter squadron of volunteer American pilots. In May 1916, Rockwell became the first pilot to score a victory for the new unit when he shot down a German plane. He was wounded in the skies over Verdun but refused hospitalization, insisting on remaining in the air. He flew more missions with the Lafayette Escadrille than any other pilot until his death in aerial combat in September 1916. First to Fight is a high-octane drama of a remarkable soldier and pilot who fought in the trenches and in the skies during World War I. It is the story of one of the first American fighter pilots at the dawn of aerial combat, the era of the Red Baron, with dogfighting biplanes high above the trench lines. But more than a World War I story, more than an aviation story, this is the story of an idealist who volunteered—long before his country drafted its first soldier—to fight, and ultimately die, in defense of civilization.

Author : Patricia O'Toole
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Page : 656 pages
File Size : 15,17 MB
Release : 2019-04-16
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0743298101

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Acclaimed author Patricia O’Toole’s “superb” (The New York Times) account of Woodrow Wilson, one of the most high-minded, consequential, and controversial US presidents. A “gripping” (USA TODAY) biography, The Moralist is “an essential contribution to presidential history” (Booklist, starred review). “In graceful prose and deep scholarship, Patricia O’Toole casts new light on the presidency of Woodrow Wilson” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis). The Moralist shows how Wilson was a progressive who enjoyed unprecedented success in leveling the economic playing field, but he was behind the times on racial equality and women’s suffrage. As a Southern boy during the Civil War, he knew the ravages of war, and as president he refused to lead the country into World War I until he was convinced that Germany posed a direct threat to the United States. Once committed, he was an admirable commander-in-chief, yet he also presided over the harshest suppression of political dissent in American history. After the war Wilson became the world’s most ardent champion of liberal internationalism—a democratic new world order committed to peace, collective security, and free trade. With Wilson’s leadership, the governments at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 founded the League of Nations, a federation of the world’s democracies. The creation of the League, Wilson’s last great triumph, was quickly followed by two crushing blows: a paralyzing stroke and the rejection of the treaty that would have allowed the United States to join the League. Ultimately, Wilson’s liberal internationalism was revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt and it has shaped American foreign relations—for better and worse—ever since. A cautionary tale about the perils of moral vanity and American overreach in foreign affairs, The Moralist “does full justice to Wilson’s complexities” (The Wall Street Journal).

Author : John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 737 pages
File Size : 20,68 MB
Release : 2009-11-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0307273016

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The first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars. A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president—he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties. Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson’s domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious—not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. As the president of Princeton, his encounters with the often rancorous battles of academe prepared him for state and national politics. Just two years after he was elected governor of New Jersey, Wilson, now a leader in the progressive movement, won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in one of the twentieth century’s most memorable presidential elections. Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people. John Milton Cooper, Jr., gives us a vigorous, lasting record of Wilson’s life and achievements. This is a long overdue, revelatory portrait of one of our most important presidents—particularly resonant now, as another president seeks to change the way government relates to the people and regulates the economy.

Author : Michael S. Neiberg
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 47,84 MB
Release : 2016-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0190464976

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When war broke out in Europe in August of 1914, it seemed, to observers in the United States, the height of madness. The Old World and its empires were tearing each other apart, and while most Americans blamed the Germans, pitied the Belgians, and felt kinship with the Allies, they wanted no part in the carnage. Two years into war President Woodrow Wilson won re-election by pledging to keep out of the conflict. Yet by the spring of 1917-by which point millions had been killed for little apparent gain or purpose-the fervor to head "Over There" swept the country. America wanted in. The Path to War shows us how that happened. Entry into the war resulted from lengthy debate and soul-searching about national identity, as so-called "hyphenated citizens" of Irish and German heritage wrestled with what it meant to be American. Many hoped to keep to the moral high ground, condemning German aggression while withholding from the Allies active support, offering to mediate between the belligerents while keeping clear. Others, including the immensely popular former president Theodore Roosevelt, were convinced that war offered the country the only way to assume its rightful place in world affairs. Neiberg follows American reaction to such events as the sinking of the Lusitania, German terrorism, and the incriminating Zimmermann telegram, shedding light on the dilemmas and crises the country faced as it moved from ambivalence to belligerence. As we approach the centenary of the war, the effects of the pivot from peace to war still resonate, as Michael Neiberg's compelling book makes clear. The war transformed the United States into a financial powerhouse and global player, despite the reassertion of isolationism in the years that followed. Examining the social, political, and financial forces at work as well as the role of public opinion and popular culture, The Path to War offers both a compelling narrative and the inescapable conclusion that World War One was no parenthetical exception in the American story but a moment of national self-determination.