From the Book's Foreword: Long-awaited, Mary C Gillett's final work The Army Medical Department, 1917-1941, complete her four-volume study covering the years from 1775 to 1941. Although the Medical Department had improved medical standards and practices because of the latest advances in scientific medicine and was making significant progress toward creating an organizational structure and a supply system able to handle the demands of a conflict of any size, its reserves of trained personnel and supplies were seriously inadequate when the nation entered world War I in the spring of 1917. The narrative first describes the struggle of an unprepared department to meet the myriad demands of a war unprecedented size and complexity, then follows postwar efforts to meet the needs of the peacetime army during nearly two decades of continental isolationism and budgetary neglect, and finally covers the brief period of growing awareness of America's involvement in another major conflict and the intensive preparation efforts that ensued.

Provides the first broad survey of Native American contributions during the war, examining how military service led to hightened expectations for changes in federal Indian policy and their standard of living.

During World War I the U.S. demanded that all able-bodied men work or fight. White men who were husbands and fathers, owned property or worked at approved jobs had the benefits of citizenship without fighting. Others were often barred from achieving these benefits. This book tells the stories of those affected by the Selective Service System.