American Midnight The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis [Audiobook]

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. 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. 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.