The World Remade
America in World War I
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The World Remade
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
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By:
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G. J. Meyer
About this listen
A bracing, indispensable account of America's epoch-defining involvement in the Great War, rich with fresh insights into the key issues, events, and personalities of the period
After years of bitter debate, the United States declared war on Imperial Germany on April 6, 1917, plunging the country into the savage European conflict that would redraw the map of the continent - and the globe. The World Remade is an engrossing chronicle of America's pivotal, still controversial intervention into World War I, encompassing the tumultuous politics and towering historical figures that defined the era and forged the future.
When it declared war, the United States was the youngest of the major powers and militarily the weakest by far. On November 11, 1918, when the fighting stopped, it was not only the richest country on earth but the mightiest. With the mercurial, autocratic President Woodrow Wilson as a primary focus, G. J. Meyer takes listeners from the heated deliberations over US involvement, through the provocations and manipulations that drew us into the fight, to the battlefield itself and the shattering aftermath of the struggle. America's entry into the Great War helped make possible the defeat of Germany that had eluded Britain, France, Russia, and Italy in three and a half years of horrendous carnage. Victory, in turn, led to a peace treaty so ill conceived, so vindictive, that the world was put on the road to an even bloodier confrontation a mere 20 years later.
On the home front, Meyer recounts the breakup of traditional class structures, the rise of the progressive and labor movements, the wave of anti-German hysteria, and the explosive expansion of both the economy and federal power, including shocking suspensions of constitutional protections that planted the seeds of today's national security state. Here also are revealing portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert La Follette, Eugene Debs, and John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, among others, as well as European leaders such as "Welsh Wizard" David Lloyd George of Britain, "Tiger" Georges Clemenceau of France, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
Meyer interweaves the many strands of his story into a gripping narrative that casts new light on one of the darkest, most forgotten corners of US history. In the grand tradition of his earlier work A World Undone - which centered on the European perspective - The World Remade adds a new, uniquely American dimension to our understanding of the seminal conflict of the 20th century.
©2017 G. J. Meyer (P)2017 Random House AudioCritic Reviews
What listeners say about The World Remade
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 09-08-2022
The World, Revisioned.
For those with an idealiised view of Woodrow Wilson this history will presumably be regarded as somewhat iconoclastic.
The World Remade certainly does cover the American military campaigns of WW1, but it is not in essence a military history.
Instead, Meyer’s book is an engaging account of the personae who directed the course of the American involvement in this war and also of the social, political and economic currents and machinations that in turn influenced, conditioned and restricted their own actions.
At its core is a biographical account of the personality, psyche and world-view of the wartime President and the evolution of his thinking in regard to America’s involvement in the war and, more so, in the formulation of the subsequent Peace.
Yet, Meyer also delves deeply into the extensive cast of crucial, albeit secondary in this text, players that shaped this era of American history on both sides of the Atlantic, in arenas both domestic and international.
The American social history of this period is intrinsically sewn into the structure of Meyer’s book and stands out as a particularly strong attribute of the work. Ranging from the boiling-over horrors of the Jim Crow era through to the iniquities of reward and burden brought about by the wartime command economy, these briefer “Background” chapters quickly prove themselves to be consistently salient and illuminating. Meyer earnestly explores multiple socio-political themes inalienable from American engagement in the First World War, such as women’s suffrage, prohibition, mishandling of the Spanish Flu pandemic and the sliding scale of validity of Americaness. Of all these, it is the quashed potential of the American labour movement and the pariah status with which it was tarred during the war years that rings with the most sustained sonority throughout.
Aided by narrator Shapiro’s masterful sensitivity to the text, The World Remade is imbued with a sense of tragedy. It is to the great credit of Meyer’s history that this is not due to any default pathos requisite, at least in tone, when dealing with the First World War. Rather, it emanates from historical arguments and interpretations made and substantiated over the course of the text.
Over the course of the book, President Wilson is illustrated as a figure of Shakespearean tragedy in that his visionary greatness was prevented from materialising in large part due to his own innate flaws.
Then, there is a historical tragedy hypothesised; if only the U.S. had suffered as long or bled as greatly as it’s allies, or at least had drawn different and less exceptionalist conclusions from its role in the conflict then perhaps the resultant international peace settlement could have gone much further towards rendering the First World War “the war to end all war”.
Finally, Meyer highlights the tragic legislative legacy, irrefutable yet certainly not unique to WW1, of law created in wake of maelstrom that is utilised long into the future as an instrument within Democracy to suppress dissent.
As an Australian listener whose compatriot, Julian Assange, stands prosecutable in the U.S. under the Wilson Administration’s Espionage Act of 1917, the long and living shock waves of the First World War are rendered explicitly contemporary by Meyer’s highly educational history.
LH, Melbourne, 8/22
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