| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Gerald E. Shenk. "Work or Fight!" Race, Gender, and the Draft in World War One. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. Pp. x, 194. Cloth $79.95, paper $26.95.

When Representative Charles Rangel proposed a Universal Service Act, requiring two years of compulsory military or alternative civilian service from all American men and women aged eighteen to twenty-six, in 2003, many applauded the proposal as a more fair method of sharing the burden of national defense. Advocates of the selective service system put in place in September of 1917 also argued that it would be a more equitable way than an all-volunteer force of sharing the burden of war. Yet the system included a complex set of deferments, exempting some from service, especially those whose civilian work was deemed essential. As Gerald E. Shenk's perceptive book shows, in parceling out those deferments and determining the fates of draft-age men, the selective service system was far from equitable. Rather than fairly distributing the burden of national defense, officials running the system used it to "protect privileges associated with property, patriarchy, and white supremacy" (p. 153).

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