Awards

• Winner of Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title 2023 (United States)
• Winner of Winner of the Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize, granted by the American Politics Group of the UK Political Studies Association 2023 (United States)

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9781512823141

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A Nation of Veterans completely recasts the history of veterans' politics and benefits in the United States. While historians have long explained the remarkable success of the GI Bill and the Veterans Administration's vast post-WWII programs as easy political consensus, Olivier Burtin shows us they are the result of hard-fought political struggle and by no means foreordained. From the interwar years through the 1960s, a highly mobilized, multi-layered veterans' movement fought off critics and doubters to build a vast, exclusionary support system for mostly white male veterans. And while the veterans' movement itself declined in the 1970s, martial citizenship and military welfare lived on, stronger than ever. A Nation of Veterans is a book historians of war and welfare must read.-- Jennifer Mittelstadt, author of The Rise of Military Welfare State In this original, surprising, and compelling new book, Olivier Burtin reveals how America's veterans built one of the nation's most powerful social movements to create one of its most generous welfare systems. Based on exhaustive research and written with elegant prose, A Nation of Veterans offers a provocative and thoughtful perspective on the vast extent of America's warfare state.-- Andrew Preston, author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy Why does the United States have a separate--and more generous--welfare system for military veterans? Why are veterans' benefits widely understood as the nation's payment of a 'sacred and inviolable debt'? In this carefully researched and clearly argued work, Olivier Burtin offers an historical answer, one grounded (as good histories so often are) in contingency and in conflict. A Nation of Veterans is essential reading for anyone interested in American social policy or civil-military relations in the United States.-- Beth Bailey, author of America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force

Author Information

Olivier Burtin is Associate Professor of U.S. History and Civilization at the University of Amiens, France.

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