During a research trip to Paris in June 2000 Martha Hanna unearthed a previously unknown collection of wartime letters written by a peasant couple, Paul and Marie Pireaud. Numbering well over a thousand letters, the Pireaud collection – perhaps the only extant collection of letters written by French peasants that includes the letters of both husband and wife – became the foundation of Your Death Would be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War. Published by Harvard University Press, Your Death Would be Mine won the J. Russell Major Prize from the American Historical Association, the Colorado Book Award, and the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History.
Martha is professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A specialist in the history of modern France, her earlier books include The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers During the Great War, published by Harvard University Press.