"The essays collected here chart the war and its cultural and literary contours from a variety of new and challenging intellectual vantage points.". "Focusing in different essays on America, France, Britain, and Germany, the contributors to this book contest the long-accepted argument about World War I as the crucible of modern life. Instead, their interrogations of the trench experience, home-front conditions, forms of mass culture, and literary genres reveal that the war was as much a moment of cultural opportunity as it was the point of origin for modern society or its cultural forms."--BOOK JACKET.