A Nation of Veterans

"A Nation of Veterans offers unique close look at institutions and actors at the heart of important transformations in midcentury America, it gives attention to a major social movement which has been eclipsed only by its own success, and it offers a perspective on too-forgotten history of the politics of defense spending (broadly defined) and civil-military relations clearly relevant for their contrast to debates today that they largely shaped. In all, this work goes a long way in replacing myth with history about veterans in American society and the construction of the welfare state."—IdeAs

"

A Nation of Veterans is an important contribution not just to policy history or the history of social movements
but also to the understanding of the importance and conflicted nature of America’s relationship with its
veterans...Burtin has shown that easy understandings of military service, patriotism, and American politics are
not sufficient to truly explain the importance of the veteran to American politics and culture.

"—H-Diplo

"Burtin has crafted an exciting and informative work in A Nation of Veterans. Delivering well-researched facts in velvety prose, Burtin obliterates any notion that veteran disability compensation and entitlements were easy to obtain...This book should become a staple of any military or veteran-related program. It is a page-turner for those interested in this topic and a challenge to put down."—Choice

"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