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While the American tradition of antiwar writing is often traced back to the post-World War I era, little is known about the antiwar impulse before the war. In fact, in the era between the Civil War and WWI, American writers like Herman Melville, John William De Forest, and Walt Whitman wrote literature that went against the popular convictions of the time by morally critiquing war. For example, Herman Melville’s 1866 collection of war poems entitled Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War received little praise or attention. Cynthia Wachtell, a Professor of Literature at Yeshiva University chronicles the little-known antiwar work of American writers during this era in her new book “War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861 – 1914.” In it, Wachtell also analyzes the role played by writers like Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and William James, in popularizing distaste for war, even as they met resistance from the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and others. Harvard Professor John Stauffer calls War No More “the most important work on war writing to have emerged in many years.”

GUEST: Cynthia Wachtell, Assistant Professor of American Literature at Yeshiva University in New York and author of War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature 1861 – 1914

Find out more at www.warnomorethebook.com.