American Midnight

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 threated by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor

""A riveting, resonant account of the fragility of freedom.”—Kirkus, STARRED review

The nation was on the brink. Mobs burned Black churches to the ground. Courts threw thousands of peopleinto prison foropinions they voiced—in one notable case, onlyin private. Self-appointed vigilantes executed tens of thousands ofcitizens’ 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 erablighted bylynchings, censorship, and the sadistic, sometimes fatal abuse of conscientious objectors in military prisons—a time whosetoxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law then floweddirectly through the intervening decades to poison our own.It was a tumultuousperiod defined by adiverse and colorful cast of characters, some of whom fueled the injustice while others fought against it:from the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson,tothe fieryantiwaradvocatesKate Richards O’Hareand Emma Goldman, to labor champion Eugene Debs, to a little-knownbut ambitiousbureaucratnamedJ. Edgar Hoover, and to an outspoken leftwing agitator—who was in fact Hoover’s star undercover agent.Itis a timethatwehave mostly forgotten about, until now.

In American Midnight, award-winning historian Adam Hochschildbrings alive thehorrifying yet inspiring fouryearsfollowing the U.S. entry intothe 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.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.