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

Author: Adam Hochschild

Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross

Unabridged: 15 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 10/04/2022

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

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 reviewThe 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 O’Hare and Emma Goldman, to labor champion Eugene Debs, to a little-known but ambitious bureaucrat named J. Edgar Hoover, and to an outspoken leftwing agitator—who was in fact Hoover’s 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 U.S. 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.  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

About Adam Hochschild

ADAM HOCHSCHILD is the author of eleven books. King Leopold’s Ghost was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as was To End All Wars. His Bury the Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Christopher on October 11, 2022

Adam Hochschild's American Midnight revisits the painful period of 1917 through 1921, when the United States entered World War I then, having helped to win it, plunged into a maelstrom of political violence and state repression. Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost) turns his narrative gifts to Woodrow......more

Goodreads review by Kimba on October 17, 2022

Adam Hochschild’s American Midnight is a compelling read about an overlooked chapter in American history, that is, how US involvement in World War I became an excuse for a government-led war against democracy at home. As the author notes in the Introduction, most high school history texts detail the......more

Goodreads review by Brendan on September 27, 2022

It's hard to review a book which has so many positive attributes but has one major and fatal flaw. The review becomes even harder when the author is Adam Hochschild who wrote one of the best books I have ever read, King Leopold's Ghost. The positives of American Midnight are considerable. Hochschild......more