From the coauthor of the New York Times best seller Hamilton: The
Revolution, the stunning story of five American radicals fighting for
their ideals as the country goes mad around them.
Where do we find our ideals? What does it mean to live for them - and to
risk dying for them? For Americans during World War I, these weren't
abstract questions. Young Radicals tells the story of five activists,
intellectuals, and troublemakers who agitated for freedom and equality
in the hopeful years before the war, then fought to defend those values
in a country pitching into violence and chaos.
Based on six years of extensive archival research, Jeremy McCarter's
dramatic narrative brings to life the exploits of Randolph Bourne, the
bold social critic who strove for a dream of America that was decades
ahead of its time; Max Eastman, the charismatic poet-propagandist of
Greenwich Village, whose magazine The Masses fought the government for
the right to oppose the war; Walter Lippmann, a boy wonder of socialism
who forged a new path to seize new opportunities; Alice Paul, a
suffragist leader who risked everything to win women the right to vote;
and John Reed, the swashbuckling journalist and impresario who was an
eyewitness to - and a key player in - the Russian Revolution.
Each of these figures sensed a moment of unprecedented promise for
American life - politically, socially, culturally - and struggled to
bring it about, only to see a cataclysmic war and reactionary fervor
sweep it away. A century later, we are still fighting for the ideals
these five championed: peace, women's rights, economic equality, freedom
of speech - all aspects of a vibrant American democracy. The story of
their struggles brings new light and fresh inspiration to our own.
