The nation was on the brink. Mobs burned Black churches to the ground. Courts threw thousands into prison for the opinions they voiced. Newspapers, were forced to close. When the government stepped in, it was often to fan the flames. This was America during and after the First World War: a brief but appalling era blighted by lynchings, censorship, and violence-a time whose toxic currents of racism, nativism, and red-baiting flowed directly through the intervening decades to poison our own. In American Midnight, award-winning historian Adam Hochschild brings alive a dark period in our nation's history, revealing an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured country and showing how their struggles still guide us today.