American Midnight

I read this book as part of my background reading for my recent book, Justice for All. In Hochschild’s telling, American exceptionalism—the nation’s self-perception as a shining “city on a hill”—foundered in the post-World War I era when socialists and, basically, anyone who undermined social norms and customs was suppressed in extraordinary acts of violence.

Given current efforts to whitewash American history, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the unvarnished truth about our nation’s past.

This nonfiction picture of a “forgotten crisis,” the hysterical extremism in America surrounding World War I, is so packed with shocking information I finished it in a fury, thinking, “Everyone must read this book.”

As daily news reports strike so many these days with the sense that things have never been worse, I believe that we need to know more about history, understand the antecedents of our troubles, and learn from the brave men and women who fought evil and folly in the past.

The book presents so many parallels to today’s threats to democracy, some even more deadly than… show more.

One of the great historians of our time just published the best overview of this period we have yet and it places the Red Scare and Red Summer (widespread attacks on Black communities on an unprecedented scale) of 1919 at the center of its 1917-1921 sweep. We get a great picture of how the World War I home front escalated repression and the U.S. connections to an explosive international situation during and after the war, including the Russian Revolution.