Newspaper Pictorials.

The Library of Congress American Memory project is a stunning collection of rotogravures taken fromThe War of Nations and original editions of The New York Times and The New York Tribune from 1914 to 1919. The rotogravure process gave daily urban newspapers high-quality images that had previously been found only in weekly papers or periodicals. Essays about the rotogravure process and photographs as propaganda add knowledge and perspective to this impressive collection of words and pictures. Date and title searching is enabled, and a detailed 1914-19 time line outlines the crucial war years. In addition to photographs from the frontlines of WW I, images from the home front captured day-to-day life in North America, the latest fashions sported by society girls, women holding down jobs in industries to support the war effort, and suffragists campaigning for the right to vote.

During the World War I era (1914-18), leading newspapers took advantage of a new printing process that dramatically altered their ability to reproduce images. Rotogravure printing, which produced richly detailed, high quality illustrations—even on inexpensive newsprint paper—was used to create vivid new pictorial sections. Publishers that could afford to invest in the new technology saw sharp increases both in readership and advertising revenue.
The images in this collection track American sentiment about the war in Europe, week by week, before and after the United States became involved. Events of the war are detailed alongside society news and advertisements touting products of the day, creating a pictorial record of both the war effort and life at home. The collection includes an illustrated history of World War I selected from newspaper rotogravure sections that graphically documents the people, places, and events important to the war. This work is recommended for students of US history, early-20th-century popular culture, mass communication, and journalism. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate collections. Reviewed by Abbott, University of Evansville, for ACRL's Choice, Oct 2013/