Think of any period from the past century or so, and a few images or events will probably come to mind—often transmitted by popular culture as much as the history classroom. We remember the Depression through Henry Fonda playing a migrant Okie; the Eisenhower era's spirit of ruthless normality is preserved in the adventures of Jerry Mathers, as the Beaver. The enormous and rather puzzling exception, at least in the U.S., is World War I and its immediate aftermath. This marked the arrival of American military and political power on the global stage. But the images in our public memory are few and blurry, and on this topic our popular culture tends to be as laconic as one of Hemingway's wounded characters.
