Deschutes Public Library

American midnight, the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis, Adam Hochschild

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-372) and index

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

American midnight

bibliography

1306216853

Adam Hochschild

the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis

"From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a groundbreaking reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threatened by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor. The nation was on the brink. Mobs burned Black churches to the ground. Courts threw thousands of people into prison for opinions they voiced in one notable case, only in private. Self-appointed vigilantes executed tens of thousands of citizens arrests. Some seventy-five newspapers and magazines were banned from the mail and forced to close. When the government stepped in, it was often to fan the flames. This was America during and after the Great War: a brief but appalling era blighted by lynchings, censorship, and the sadistic, sometimes fatal abuse of conscientious objectors in military prisons a time whose toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law then flowed directly through the intervening decades to poison our own. It was a tumultuous period defined by a diverse and colorful cast of characters, some of whom fueled the injustice while others fought against it: from the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson to the fiery antiwar advocates Kate Richards OHare and Emma Goldman to labor champion Eugene Debs to a little-known but ambitious bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover, and to an outspoken left-wing agitator who was in fact Hoovers star undercover agent. It is a time that we have mostly forgotten about, until now. In American Midnight, award-winning historian Adam Hochschild brings alive the horrifying yet inspiring four years following the US entry into the First World War, spotlighting forgotten repression while celebrating an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured country and showing how their struggles still guide us today." --, Inside jacket flaps

adult

Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis