Savage Peace: America in 1919 - Tapa dura

""Savage Peace" is Ann Hagedorn's brilliantly conceived, meticulously researched, and beautifully written biography of the year 1919. Now we have a historian who is up to the challenge of vividly demonstrating not only 1919's historical significance, but also its political and cultural relevance to us in the era of 9/11 and the Patriot Act."-- William M. Tuttle Jr., author of ""Daddy's Gone to War": The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children" and "Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919" ""Savage Peace" reads like a wondrous and sprawling novel, except that it is all true. Thoroughly researched and insightful, it spins together the fascinating threads of 1919. And what a wonderful cast of characters! From Eddington to Einstein to Du Bois and Wilson, they all come alive. This book is so joyful you'll forget that it's serious history." -- Walter Isaacson, author of "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Einstein: His Life and Universe" "Ann Hagedorn gives us a grand reappraisal of the American context for the "Savage Peace" of 1919. Everyone interested in the path to our present struggles and future alternatives will want to read this splendid and important book." -- Blanche Wiesen Cook, Professor of History, John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; author of "Eleanor Roosevelt" and "Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2, The Defining Years, 1933-1938"

`This vivid account of a nation in tumult and transition is absorbing, and the nexus of global and national upheaval is chillingly relevant' - Publishers Weekly *Evocative account of America's turbulent post-war history *Brilliant work of history filled with colourful characters *Reveals surprising parallels with America today Former Wall Street Journal staffer Hagedorn (Beyond the River) makes a stylish entry into the history-of-a-year genre with this account of America in upheaval in the wake of WWI. In 1919, both the world and the US were in need of reconstruction: soldiers returning from war needed jobs, and the influenza epidemic wasn't quite under control. Two threads Hagedorn follows are middle-class Americans' fear of Bolshevism, and the struggles of black Americans. US Attorney-General Palmer instigated raids to try to root out leftist activists, and in what may have been`the State Department's first official interference in African-American politics', the agency denied black Americans' request for passports to travel to France and speak to the Paris Peace Conference about racial equality. In a year rife with lynchings in the Deep South, W.E.B. Du Bois, who had urged black Americans to shelve their grievances and fight the Germans, now argued that blacks, having served the nation, deserved to be accorded civil rights. Still, some exciting cultural developments presaged the roaring '20s: F. Scott Fitzgerald's star rose, and the nation's first dial telephones were installed in Norfolk, Va. About the Author Ann Hagedorn was born in Dayton, Ohio. An author and journalist, she has written for several newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, The San Jose Mercury News, and The Washington Post. She has taught at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author of three previous books, most recently Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad. She lives in Ripley, Ohio.