American Midnight: Fear and Repression in the Wilson Years

America’s entrance into World War I marked the start of four years in our nation’s history characterized by violent attacks on dissenters, aggressive union-busting, corporation-funded private armies allied with law enforcement, mass civilian arrests, anti-immigrant violence, stringent government censorship, and the imprisonment of a presidential candidate, all amidst the backdrop of the war, a pandemic, and the specter of the Russian Revolution. In American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis (Mariner Books, 2022), Adam Hochschild illuminates the dark currents of this often-overlooked era, which, in the words of The New York Times, “makes the McCarthyism of the 1950s look almost subtle by comparison.” Join us as we explore how, more than a century ago, most Americans endorsed or ignored a widespread campaign of fear and repression that has few parallels in our past.