An Evening with Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight

PAST EVENT: APRIL 9, 2024 | An Evening with Adam Hochschild, historian and author of “American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis”

In his book “American Midnight,” historian Adam Hochschild reassesses 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.

American Public Square and the National WWI Museum and Memorial hosted an evening of discussion with the author. A book signing with the author was offered following the program.  A video of the program can be accessed below.

This event was co-hosted by APS and The National WWI Museum and Memorial.

With special thanks to Cathi & David Brain for their support of the program.

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 book, “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.

In “American Midnight,” 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. The New York Times describes the book as a “masterly” 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 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.

“American Midnight” was described as the Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune and others.  Visit the publisher’s website for purchasing options.

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