Some seventy-five newspapers and magazines were banned from the mail and forced to close. Self-appointed vigilantes executed tens of thousands of citizens' arrests. Courts threw thousands of people into prison for opinions they voiced-in one notable case, only in private. Mobs burned Black churches to the ground. 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. Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking.

Text is bright and free of marks or underlining. A clean crisp well preserved 2022 Mariner Books first edition hardcover in a fine tight binding. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. A groundbreaking work of narrative history, American Midnight recalls these horrifying yet inspiring four years, when some brave Americans strove to keep their fractured country democratic, while ruthless others stimulated toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law-poisons that feel ominously familiar today. Edgar Hoover others less familiar, such as the fiery antiwar advocate Kate Richards O'Hare and the outspoken Leo Wendell, a labor radical who was frequently arrested and wholly trusted by his comrades-but who was in fact Hoover's star undercover agent. Adam Hochschild brings to life this troubled period, which stretched from 1917 to 1921, through the interwoven tales of a colorful cast of characters: some well-known, among them the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson and the ambitious young bureaucrat J.

This was America during and after the Great War: a brief but appalling era blighted by torture, censorship, and killings. An astonishing 250,000 people joined a nationwide vigilante group-sponsored by the Department of Justice. Well over a thousand men and women were jailed solely for what they had written or said, even in private. Angry mobs burned Black churches to the ground and chased down pacifists and immigrants. From award-winning, New York Times bestselling historian Adam Hochschild, a fast-paced, revelatory new account of a pivotal but neglected period in American history: World War I and its stormy aftermath, when bloodshed and repression on the home front nearly doomed American democracy.

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