American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis

National Bestseller a New York Times Washington Post and New Yorker “Best Books of 2022” selection New York Times Editors Choice a most anticipated book of Fall 2022: the New York Times Boston Globe Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune From legendary historian Adam Hochschild a “masterly” (New York Times) 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 voicedin 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 prisonsa 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 leftwing agitatorwho was in fact Hoovers star undercover agent. It is a time that we have mostly forgotten about until now. InAmerican Midnight award-winning historian Adam Hochschild brings alive the horrifying yet inspiring four years following the U.S. entry into the First World War spotlighting forgotten repression while celebrating an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured countryand showing how their struggles still guide us today.