War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861-1914, by Cynthia Wachtell.  Louisiana State University Press, 2010

Long before the twentieth century, the meaning of the battlefield was questioned. Exploring the span of American literature between the Civil War and World War I, Cynthia Wachtell—Professor of English, Stern College—reveals the diverse responses to war, which shifted from patriotism to disillusionment. The writers represented here—among them Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Stockton--include journals, eyewitness accounts, and stories such as Mark Twain’s pacifist “War Prayer.” The increasingly gruesome reality, as depicted in these works, culminated in the technology of World War I, where the machine gun replaced the smooth-bore musket, heralding the modern era and replacing forever the romance of combat and the glory of death for one’s country. Jay Winter, professor of history at Yale University, calls Prof. Wachtell’s book “a path-breaking study.”