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

National Bestseller • One of the year's most acclaimed works of nonfiction

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, New York Post, Fast Company

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. 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 of American history defined by a diverse and colorful cast of characters, some of whom fueled the injustice while others fought for civil liberties: 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.  

This gripping work of political history reveals the forgotten forces that shaped modern America.

• A Forgotten Era of U.S. History: Uncover the shocking four-year period after World War I when American democracy faced one of its gravest threats.
• Widespread Political Repression: Witness an America of mob violence, government-led censorship, and the imprisonment of thousands for their political opinions.
• The Roots of Modern Division: Learn how the toxic currents of racism, nativism, and red-baiting from this era poisoned the nation’s politics for decades to come.
• Pivotal Historical Figures: Meet the cast of characters at the center of the storm, from a sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson to an ambitious young J. Edgar Hoover and the activists who fought them.