The creation of a universal healthcare system for veterans is one of the untold social-welfare stories of the twentieth century. Adler rightly places World War I veterans at the center of her narrative, illuminating how their ongoing health struggles spurred sweeping reforms. Through evocative prose and razor-sharp analysis, Burdens of War details this generation's determination to fight for the right to government-funded health care. We still live in the shadows of World War I, heirs to the veterans' health care system that this generation forged. -- Jennifer D. Keene, Chapman University, author of Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America As Jessica Adler demonstrates, the Great War had great consequences for American health care and much else besides. She has written a masterful book, both deeply researched and artfully written, on the origins of the medical and social service systems for veterans. This is policy history and medical history at its best. -- Edward D. Berkowitz, George Washington University, coauthor of The Other Welfare: Supplemental Security Income and U.S. Social Policy Deeply researched, vividly written, compelling... An important contribution to the history of US government, social policy and health care. The voices of needy, often angry veterans, black and white, ring out in the book but, as Adler makes clear, improvements to veterans' health care are often contentious-- a theme germane today. -- Rosemary Stevens, Author of A Time of Scandal. Charles R. Forbes, Warren G. Harding, and the Making of the Veterans Bureau, Weill Cornell Medical College Thoroughly researched, logically constructed and engagingly written, Jessica Adler's Burdens of War sheds light on Progressive reform, the nature of expertise, the political and cultural complexity of building social policy, but most of all it takes the reader into the continuing debate that shaped the emergence of the Veteran's Health System, a debate that continues to rage to this day. -- Dale C. Smith, Dale C Smith, PhDProfessor of Military Medicine & History, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Jessica Adler's excellent book, Burdens of War provides a definitive examination of the emergence of the modern veterans healthcare system during and after World War I. In doing so, she goes beyond existing accounts' emphasis on institutional development with a fine-grained focus on the political activism of individual veterans and their emerging organizations as the critical actors who shaped it. Superbly researched and deftly written, Burdens of War offers an extended and timely meditation on the creation both of American healthcare systems and of new government entitlements. -- Stephen R. Ortiz, Binghamton University (SUNY) Burdens of War tells the compelling story of the creation of the U.S. veterans' health care system in the decades after World War I. Jessica Adler skillfully blends medical and policy history to examine the ideas and actions of government, the medical profession, local communities, and veterans themselves in building what became one of the nation's most successful, yet embattled, "entitlement" programs. -- Beatrix Hoffman, Professor Northerin Illinois University

During and after World War I, policy makers, public health advocates, and veterans laid the groundwork for the extension of government-sponsored medical care to millions of former service members. In the process, they built a pillar of American social policy. In Burdens of War, Jessica L. Adler explores how the establishment of the veterans' health system marked a reimagining of modern veterans' benefits and signaled a pathbreaking validation of the power of professionalized institutional medical care. Adler reveals that a veterans' health system came about incrementally, amid skepticism from legislators, doctors, and army officials concerned about the burden of long-term obligations, monetary or otherwise, to ex-service members. She shows how veterans' welfare shifted from centering on pension and domicile care programs rooted in the nineteenth century to direct access to health services. She also traces the way that fluctuating ideals about hospitals and medical care influenced policy at the dusk of the Progressive Era; how race, class, and gender affected the health-related experiences of soldiers, veterans, and caregivers; and how interest groups capitalized on a tense political and social climate to bring about change. The book moves from the 1910s-when service members requested better treatment, Congress approved new facilities and increased funding, and elected officials expressed misgivings about who should have access to care-to the 1930s, when the economic crash prompted veterans to increasingly turn to hospitals for support while bureaucrats, politicians, and doctors attempted to rein in the system. By the eve of World War II, the roots of what would become the country's largest integrated health care system were firmly planted and primed for growth. Drawing readers into a critical debate about the level of responsibility America bears for wounded service members, Burdens of War is a unique and moving case study.