My Fellow Soldiers: General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War

Carroll (Here Is Where), creator of the Legacy Project war correspondence archives, leads readers through the WWI experience via personal correspondence from soldiers in the trenches. Selecting excerpts from thousands of letters to highlight the human perception of the war, Carroll embeds these recollections in a clear, chronological war narrative that takes the reader from the beginning of the war in 1914 through President Wilson’s decision to enter the war in 1917 and the U.S. military’s combat experience for the remainder of the conflict. Carroll uses the personal correspondence of Gen. Pershing, the U.S. commander in France, as a means of establishing the war timeline. Varied American perspectives of the war are included, and the letters of African-Americans and women figure prominently in the work. Experts on WWI may not find much new in this volume, but for those who are not familiar with the war or only know its broad outlines, Carroll has produced an engaging and informative introduction to a war that has been largely relegated to the shadows by the subsequent global conflagration. Agent: Miriam Altshuler, DeFiore and Company. (Apr.)