• Introduction Roger Chickering and Stig Förster; Part I. Germany, The United States and Total War: 1. Total war: the use and abuse of a concept Roger Chickering; 2. Different path to war: a comparative study of militarism and imperialism in the United States and Imperial Germany, 1871–1914 Irmgard Steinisch; Part II. War and Society: 3. The political economy of warfare in America, 1865–1914 Paul A. C. Kiostinen; 4. Hugo Stinnes and the prospect of war before 1914 Gerald D. Feldman; 5. War preparations and ethnic and racial relations in the United States Bruce White; 6. Religion and war in Imperial Germany Gangolf Hübinger; 7. Socializing American youth to be citizen-soldiers David I. MacLeod; 8. Preparing German youth for war Derek S. Linton; 9. Heroes and would-be heroes: veterans' and reservists' associations in Imperial Germany Thomas Rohkrämer; 10. Mobilizing philanthropy in the service of war: the female rituals of care in the New Germany, 1871–1914 Jean H. Quataert; Part III. Memory and Anticipation: War and Culture: 11. The American debate over modern war, 1871–1914 John Whiteclay Chambers II; 12. Whose war? Whose nation? Tensions in the memory of the Franco-German War of 1870–1 Alfred Kelly; 13. War preparations and national identity in Imperial Germany Volker R. Berghahn; 14. Military imagination in the United States, 1815–1917 David F. Trask; 15. Dreams and nightmares: German military leadership and the images of future warfare, 1871–1914 Stig Förster; 16. 'A calamity to civilization': Theodore Roosevelt and the danger of war in Europe Raimund Lammersdorf; Part IV. The Experience of War: 17. Total war on the American Indian Frontier Robert M. Utley; 18. 'The fellows can just starve': on wars of 'pacification' in the African colonies of Imperial Germany and the concept of 'total war' Trutz von Trotha; 19. Was the Philippine-American war a 'total war'? Glenn Anthony May; 20. An army on vacation? The German war in China, 1900–1 Sabine Dabringhaus; Index.

"...this is a highly important collection of essays providing insights into the nineteenth century origins of the twentieth century standard of extreme, all-consuming, horrific warfare known as 'total war.'" The Journal of Military History