| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 146 words from this article are provided below; about 343 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Dream of Civilized Warfare: World War I Flying Aces and the American Imagination. By Linda R. Robertson. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. xx, 481 pp. Cloth, $35.95, ISBN 0-8166-4270-2. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8166-4271-0.)

The horrors of World War I continually induce scholars to probe their consequences. Linda R. Robertson adds to cultural studies of the war by analyzing misinformation that romanticized ace combat pilots in an idealized "war-as-imagined" to divert public attention from the "fierce absurdity" of trench warfare. The fighter pilot, she claims (but does not prove), "made his greatest contribution to the war as a tool for propaganda" (p. 87). She also claims, plausibly but in my opinion inconclusively, that impossibly ambitious attempts to build huge numbers of military aircraft in 1917–1918 began an American "dream of civilized warfare," leading to high-tech precision bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq.

. . .

There are about 343 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.