War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America

Beth O’Donnell Linker '92, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

As the United States moved toward World War I, the U.S. government sought a way to avoid the enormous cost of providing injured soldiers with pensions, which it had been doing since Revolutionary War times. Beth O’Donnell Linker traces the government’s development of rehabilitation services for injured veterans, and the postwar establishment of the Veterans Administration and its system of federally funded hospitals, arguably one of the greatest legacies to come out of the First World War.

Linker is an assistant professor in the history and sociology of science department at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband, Damon Linker ’91.