Thank you to the libraries—university and public—and to the bookstores—used and new—in Seattle, Washington; New York, New York; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Corvallis, Oregon. Many books were integral to the writing of this one, some found completely by chance.
I owe a great debt to historical context and detail found in The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne; The Discovery of France and Parisians by Graham Robb; The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom; Mussolini’s Italy by R. J. B. Bosworth; City of Nets by Otto Friedrich; The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell; Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins; Constellation of Genius by Kevin Jackson; The Golden West by Daniel Fuchs; The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig; A Nervous Splendor by Frederic Morton; A World Undone by G. J. Meyer; No Man’s Land by Eric J. Leed; and The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund.
I am particularly indebted to Pál Kelemen’s beautifully written Hussar’s Picture Book, which inspired the stories that Paul Weyerhauser tells about Ilona and the requisitioned house in Russian Poland. A passage in Mark Thompson’s wonderful history of the Italian Front, The White War, serves as the basis for Paul’s description of the explosion on Mount Tofana. Bianchi’s story about Giuseppe Anglani is based on an account found in Vincenzo D’Aquila’s strange and fascinating memoir, Bodyguard Unseen. The real-life details of Anthelme Mangin can be found in Jean-Yves Le Naour’s intensely moving The Living Unknown Soldier. Father Gaillard’s technique of touching the cold noses is based on the method of a British Chaplain, Cyril Horsley-Smith, a detail found in Emily Mayhew’s vivid and incisive Wounded. The story Father Perrin tells Tom about the faceless soldier in the hospital at Rouen is based on a French nurse’s account I encountered at an exhibition in the Douaumont Ossuary. The letters of Avery Royce Wolfe (compiled and edited by William and Eric Harvey as Letters from Verdun) were an invaluable resource for bolstering my understanding of life as an American ambulance driver at Verdun.
Thanks to the College of Liberal Arts and the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State University for crucial support. Thanks to Valerie Steiker, Nan Graham, Sally Howe, Rosie Mahorter, and everyone at Scribner. Thanks to Julie Barer and everyone at the Book Group. Thanks to Peter Bognanni and Brad Liening. Thanks to Tom Dybek. Thanks to my parents. Most of all, thanks to Madeline.