Meticulously researched and superbly written, Amerikanernest provides new perspectives on the most celebrated American unit of the Great War-the 77th Division's so-called Lost Battalion.The story traces German tungsten mining efforts in Spokane, Washington that quintupled armament production at the Krupp gunworks in Essen Germany. It follows the journeys of two men, one German and one American, whose lives intertwined in Spokane between 1911 and 1914 and again in 1918 during the ferocious Meuse-Argonne Offensive where both men came face-to-face in the epic battlefield the Americans called 'the pocket' and the Germans called 'Amerikanernest' (American Nest).Their journeys reveal aspects of grand strategy, national mobilization of mineral resources and men, and the critical human element of the Great War from both German and American viewpoints.