Women's Experience of Modernity 1875-1945 (review)
British culture clearly exemplify Kingsbury's conception of peculiar sanity, and her work on Ford goes far to help readers understand a writer whose career seems troubling and contradictory. Though Ford may be the most complex figure in this study, Kingsbury also looks at several authors whose prowar stances were less equivocal. Wells, Wharton, and Kipling all publicly supported the war against Germany and wrote novels and propaganda that overtly supported the British and American campaigns. Through Wells and Wharton in particular, Kingsbury asks the important question: does support of the war necessarily indicate peculiar sanity, or can such a position be the result of reasoned action? One of the most striking aspects of this book is its inadvertent timeliness. Reading The Peculiar Sanity of War during the summer of 2003, I found the title particularly apt for describing not only British and American culture during World War I, but also the current geopolitical situation. Just as Kingsbury describes the renaming of hamburgers and sauerkraut as "liberty sandwiches" and "victory cabbage" respectively, we have "freedom fries." And just as rumor and gossip were used to mobilize public support for the war effort in 1914, debates now rage in the American media over the accuracy of intelligence reports used to generate similar support. This timeliness demonstrates the usefulness of a concept like "peculiar sanity" to understand not only the Great War, but also the wars that have followed.