War no more - the book, antiwar writing in American literature

Backwash of War - original antiwar writers

A "LOST" CLASSIC AND ITS "LOST" AUTHOR

Cynthia Wachtell expertly introduces The Backwash of War and its extraordinary author, Ellen N. La Motte

In The Backwash of War and three personal essays, Ellen N. La Motte, an American volunteer nurse who worked in a French field hospital during World War I, offers a profoundly disturbing image of war. Midway through the book, she explains, "Well, there are many people to write you of the noble side, the heroic side, the exalted side of war. I must write you of what I have seen, the other side, the backwash." Published in the fall of 1916, The Backwash of War was immediately banned in England and France. Two years later it was deemed as damaging to morale and was censored in wartime America. The time has come to recognize it among the seminal works of war writing and celebrate its extraordinary author.

I was blown away by this book. It reads like a Great Book you've always meant to get to, yet it lies in censure and obscurity. Ellen N. La Motte's short stories, written in the midst of WWI, are literally ahead of their time. She a legit Hemingway writing 15 years before him. Seriously, these stories are amazing. Get this book.

—Brian Castner, best-selling author and veteran of the Iraq War.

Cynthia Wachtell has resurrected La Motte's deep cut into [the] depravity [of war] in an edition notable for painstaking scholarship, thoroughness, and attention to the needs of twenty-first-century readers. Every library devoted to the personal literature of World War I or the history of medicine and armed conflict should acquire this outstanding volume.

—Michigan War Studies Review.

AMERICA'S ORIGINAL ANTIWAR WRITERS

Professor Cynthia Wachtell uncovers Melville, Twain, Hawthorne, Whitman, and others opposing war

Cynthia Wachtell - American antiwar writer

In War No More Cynthia Wachtell offers an important, new interpretation of American antiwar writing and reveals the shared antiwar impulse of some of the giants of American literature. Voicing their opposition to war's brutality, absurdity, inhumanity, and irrationality, these authors gained favor during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the implications of modern warfare became increasingly evident.

War No More is a landmark study, the most important work on war writing to have emerged in many years.

—John Stauffer, Chair of History of America Civilization and Professor of English at Harvard University

* 2011 Connecticut Book Awards - Finalist in non-fiction

* 2010 New England Book Festival - Honorable mention in non-fiction