| Abstract | This article considers how World War I was explained and memorialized in American stereography after its conclusion. Stereographs were side-by-side photographs of the same scene, which when seen through a set of lenses called a stereoscope, created a three-dimension viewing effect. The Keystone stereograph set of 300 cards, which was used in this study and was issued in 1923, provided reassuring memory in keepsake form. This study helps elucidate the role of the media in the construction of collective memory and national identity during a pivotal time in both the rise of the mass media and America's sense of its moral and political place in the world. The stereographs also show how images and text could be packaged together as "history" to tell a positive and recuperative story about what many saw as an inexplicable series of events.
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