The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of World War I

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Indiana University Press, 1990 M11 22 - 188 pages

In 1914 Europe descended into a slaughter unlike anything that had been seen before. Yet, far from seeing the conflict as a tragedy, many men welcomed it as a healthy development for society, a relief from peace. The Great Adventure explores the intellectual trends that made war seem a natural and high expression of social values. This is not a book about the specific causes of World War I, but a study of the mood in which it could take place.

What the book uncovers is a complex of deeply ingrained attitudes about manhood, sex, power, maturity, boredom, and war that defined a culture in which war came to be seen as a positive option. Although the book focuses on attitudes in Great Britain and the United States of nearly a century ago, it makes a remarkably contemporary statement about men, women, and the culture of war., reviewing a previous edition or volume

From inside the book

Contents

Responses to Change
1
Two Men Together
24
THREE Male Games
36
FOUR A Little Bloodletting
51
Peter Pans
155
Index
163
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