David Hanna teaches history at Stuyvesant High School in New York. He lives with his family in Morris County, New Jersey.

They volunteered for the French, but they were fighting for the future of civilization.

Before America joined World War I, a small group of Americans volunteered for the French Foreign Legion to help defeat the Central Powers. Historian David Hanna profiles seven of these volunteers: a poet, an artist, a boxer, a stunt pilot, a college student, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and an advertising executive. All seven men were united in courage; and some, like poet Alan Seeger, paid the ultimate sacrifice. Before he was killed in battle, Seeger penned the immortal words that inspired this book's title:

I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.