This Is Now: Adam Hochschild

1010 El Camino Real,Menlo Park CA 94025

02 November, 2022

Description

Slack-jawed Americans watching the US Capitol attack unfold on January 6, 2021 could be forgiven for thinking the US had never faced such a crisis. But it has. Heralded historian Adam Hochschild (King Leopold’s Ghost, Bury the Chains) takes us back to an eerily similar age: during and after the “war to end all wars.” On the road to the Roaring Twenties, the United States saw racial violence that killed hundreds of Black Americans. Immigrant-bashing was at a peak; refugees were scorned. The White House not only tolerated vigilante justice, it openly encouraged it. And in a press censorship coup Donald Trump could only dream of, the government shut down dozens of publications, and banned single issues of others. Hochschild’s new book AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: A Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis reinvigorates the characters that oversaw the chaos: anti-war firebrands, labor agitators, shadowy government agents, and overseeing them all, the sphinx-like Woodrow Wilson. With it all, Hochschild reanimates an era’s toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law that flowed right through the ages to poison our own. Please note: All attendees ages 5+ must present a vaccination card, a photo of your card, or a digital vaccine record (e.g., myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov) with matching photo ID. We also require a first booster for eligible attendees ages 12+. Masks are required for everyone over the age of 2 years old and must be worn at all times in the venue, and throughout the duration of the event, including the signing.