Customer Reviews

Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Reading Ann Hagedorn's Savage Peace: Hope and Fear-1919 allowed me to view and viscerally live a year in history that frankly, I had underappreciated. A compelling mosaic of a turbulent year, each detailed fragment is a well-crafted story in it's own right, but to then be masterfully woven together, illuminating the fears of Bolshevism, the frustration of the African-Americans returning from the war as heroes, but expected to `step down' upon return, or even the horrific fear of continued lynching juxtaposed to Madam C.J. Walker's phenomenal business success allows the reader to feel the conflictions of ideals, laws and everyday post-war life.

Yes, President Wilson and the peace treaties were important, but so were the riots, bomb threats, first nonstop transatlantic flight, eloquent speakers and writers including W.E.B. DuBois, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Carl Sandburg, and the first international fame for Albert Einstein with the proof of his theory of relativity. The reader learns what Helen Keller, A. Mitchell Palmer, William Monroe Trotter were doing in 1919, and get to know forgotten people such as Mabel Pufffer and Arthur Hazzard and their tragic story. The big and the small, known and unknown, arranged in Hagedorn's narrative non-fiction gives credence and life to a very important year.

Pick a year, any year, a good historian can choose any year from this country's past and produce an important and interesting book on it. However few years make for as compelling a tale as 1919 especially when in the hands of so gifted a writer as Ann Hagedorn. Indeed "Savage Peace" reads like a novel replete with heroes, villains, treachery, barbarity, tragedy and pathos.

1919 is an obvious choice for a work such as this because it was so pivotal to this country's near and distant futures. The war in Europe was just over but there remained the tricky business of sorting out the peace to follow and the US role in maintaining it. Over too was the Progressive Era and the spirit of change it exemplified was taking a darker turn with sinister powers now in the hands of a few within government as epitomized by the rise of J Edgar Hoover. African Americans had served their country with valor during the war and inevitably were going to expect a more appropriate role in society. Dramatic change was possible and just how dramatic it could be was widely feared to the levels of paranoia.

The "Great War" had been over for a few months when 1919 dawned but the assault on civil liberties that it had wrought in America continued unabated gradually morphing from a fear of all things German to a full blown Bolshevik paranoia. Dissent was rampant in manners ranging from bomb wielding anarchists to organized labor strife to legislative foreign policy debate. Levels of tolerance were low but no one suffered more than those who had already suffered the most -- America's Black citizenry.

"Savage Peace" is most savage in its stories of virulent racism practiced throughout the country particularly the horrific lynchings precipitated mostly in the south. Even for seasoned readers of history such as myself, the specifics of some lynchings that Hagedorn relates with all the gory details are quite depressing indeed. As a partial antidote there are the stories of African American heroes such as W.E.B. Dubois and William Monore Trotter.

Other heroes appear although who a particular readers admire will vary. Certainly Carl Sandburg, lawyer Harry Weinberger and Senator Hiram Johnson will have their boosters. Others may take a shine to pint-sized radical Mollie Steimer or even president Woodrow Wilson.

America was a brutal angry country in 1919 but paradoxically it was full of hope and opportunity with a million new ideas and millions of characters of all stripes. No, "Savage Peace" doesn't capture it all. Surely there could have been more on the cultural scene, the daily lives of ordinary Americans and immigration and...well the list can go on. But it's quite unfair to take Hagedorn to task for what isn't in her book when there is so much that IS in it and it so masterfully captures the highlights.

One of the best things a book like "Savage Peace" does is cause readers to be curious about some of the people and events it touches upon. The best books are the one that make you want to read ten more. "Savage Peace" is both an excellent book for those of us with a long standing interest in this time period and a great intro to readers unfamiliar with the terrain.

This book is a masterpiece of research. 1919 was an exciting year which numerous authors have written about. This particular book emphasises how the U.S. goverment and vigilante groups spied and oppressed anyone with a dissenting view. While that is true, and these events did in fact happen, the book creates a somewhat distorted, paranoid view of the period. While the "they're out to get me" books are entertaining, they are usually not balanced and focus too much on certain parts of the picture while ignoring others. I still highly recommend reading the book, just prepare for a depressing, yet well written, account of humanity in 1919. Another great book on this period is:

Alcohol, Boat Chases, and Shootouts! How the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs Fought Rum Smugglers and Pirates (Part I: 1919-1924)

I picked up this book because it covers an era in American history I know relatively little about. It starts off strong and tells many little-known stories. Hagedorn contrasts the high minded goals of Wilson in Europe with the realities of lynchings in the South. She tells horrifying story of how the sedition legislation ended up "empowering" private citizens to create a private spy ring. And the journey of William Trotter is the stuff of legend.

But. Hagedorn never met a cliche she didn't want to use at least 10 times. Too often she resorts to cliches instead of letting the facts provide the power. She undercuts the tragedy of an interracial couple in Massachusetts by repeatedly referring to their "legal lynching." Not a paragraph in one chapter was free from the phrase "legal lynching" under one supposes the assumption that readers will be too dense to get the parallels between a court finding a woman insane because she wants to marry a black man and a black man being murdered on suspicion of talking to a white woman.

Hagedorn overpraises Wilson without ever holding him accountable for the sedition legislation or his failure to bring the same fervor to saving Black Americans he brought to saving White Europe. Nor does she mention major events in 1919 America. The Spanish Flu, the Black Sox Scandal and the Prohibition movement are barely mentioned, and the Women's Suffrage movement disappears halfway through the book.

The kicker is the Bibliographical Notes section. Instead of simply telling the reader what sources Hagedorn relied on and recommends, she treats us to the tale of her lunch with Arthur Schlesinger. Apparently Mr Schlesinger praised Hagedorn on the Bibliographical Notes for her previous book and she was thrilled. (I couldn't help wondering if this wasn't faint praise on the order of complementing a writer on the clarity of his index.) Hagedorn tells us this, she says, because Schlesinger was her muse and inspiration for the arduous task of writing the Notes for this book. Oh please. Just put him in the dedications up front and spare us the false modesty because when you follow it up with lines like, "I prefer primary sources for obvious reasons" nobody believes it anyway.

I loved reading this book! Ann Hagedorn taught me so much I didn't know about my own country. Her daring and unexpected book digs deep and looks at aspects of post-war life too often neglected. Tapping into her background as a research librarian, she's been able to dig up old documents, letters and articles that reveal new truths, using her journalistic skills to weave together seamlessly a staggering number of trends and personal stories. On top of all that, her compassion for people and her fierce concern for civil rights shines through.

How do you give five stars to a book that you found yourself hating while you read it? Or, more to the point, how do you give an outstanding rating to a book that alternately made you intensely angry and disgusted, and which you never found truly enjoyable to read? Normally, I love reading books about the history of our nation. In spite of my emotional reactions to reading "Savage Peace...", I only wish I could give it more stars. Let me give potential readers a warning: if you like sweet stories that make you feel good, don't read this book! If you want to "enjoy" what you read, don't read this book! I did NOT "enjoy" myself. One night, I took the book to bed to read myself to sleep, and opened to where I stopped last, to start at the beginning of Chapter 27. I started to read and after one sentence, closed the book, and laid it aside, knowing that I dared not start the chapter if I wanted to sleep. I knew I would not be able to handle it.

What Ann Hagedorn has done in "Savage Peace..." is to present America to her readers at a point in our history where injustice prevailed, fear was rampant, the Constitution of the United States wasn't worth the paper it was printed on as far as being our "guiding light". It is the most horrible picture I have ever seen of life in America at any point in our 234 year history. I was born in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, and was too young to be aware of the McCarthyism of the 1950's from any perspective but a faint awareness after the fact. Nineteen-nineteen is the one year, if Hagedorn is accurate in her presentation, that I thank God I did not have to live through as an adult. The title, "Savage Peace, Hope And Fear In America, 1919" is completely accurate and on target. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the hope that came with the end of the first World War (or, as I would personally title it, "World War, Part 1") is the terror surrounding the continued post-war usage of the Espionage Act (1917), the Alien and Sedition Acts (1918), and the Red Scare of 1919. There were the fears of Bolshevism, Communism, bombings, civilian spy groups cooperating with the government spies, that made George Orwell's "1984" seem imminent to me. There was the fear that anyone in any union was intent on destroying the very government itself. Every bit of unrest in the nation was blamed on either Bolsheviks or on pro-German sympathizers. There were the lynchings, beatings and burnings of black Americans with virtually NO resistance from the police, the BI (Bureau of Investigation, precursor of the FBI), the federal government, or even from the President himself. And, there was the sad and disgusting story, begun in chapter 23 and returned to in chapter 27. It was the story of a wealthy white woman in love with a black man, wanting to marry in Ayer, Massachusetts, at first, a friendly and sympathetic town. Both were adults. Both with sterling reputations, but they were threatened and finally victimized by her family and his, having her declared insane for wanting to marry a black man, and spiriting him out of town by deceit, then charging him with theft of the gifts she had given him. History tells us it did not have a "happily ever after" ending. And, 1919 was the year that J. Edgar Hoover got his start at the B.I. and almost single handedly turned it into both the best and the worst government agency in the history of these United States.

To be sure, there were good things that happened in 1919. The first non-stop transatlantic flights, the scientific community's successful viewing of the May 29, 1919 version of the Moon's total eclipse of the sun, the passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and events connected with the defeat of Germany are a few, but the overwhelming story as Hagedorn tells it is centered on the words "savage" and "fear". That is, after all, the point of her book, and, as hard as it is for me to read, being an advocate of equality and justice, not to mention a proponent of simple human kindness, it is an absolutely essential period of American history to understand. Not for the purpose of possessing knowledge of terrible information about America, but for the purpose of possessing information that might help to prevent it from ever happening again. Truthfully, some of the hope and fear Hagedorn speaks of in this essential book are present today, and have been since September 11, 2001. I will admit part of my time is spent in fear, and fighting off fear of many of other ideologies that may come and try to take over my beloved America. I need this book to show me how ridiculous and how destructive excessive fear can be, and how to recognize it before it takes over.

Five Highly Disturbing Stars and this reader's appreciation.

This could have been and should have been an outstanding book, instead it is really quite horrid.

The events of 1919 were very poorly connected to the Wilson administration, when in fact those events were intimately wrapped up in Wilsons outlook on the world. Wilson screened "Birth of a Nation" in the White House declaring the movie that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, to be a truthful account and filled his review with glowing praise. Wilson resegregated a desegregated Washington DC. It seems to me that a full accounting of lynching cannot be told without a full facts of a politician who declared himself and is taught as a Progressive. Instead Wilson comes off as the bumbling idealist that so many modern day liberals wish to paint him as.

The Red Scare of 1919 is also poorly presented. Instead of exploring what was true and what was not, the author instead presents feelings or motives attributed to Attorney General Palmer that absent a diary or some other direct information, she has no business attributing to him. Today we have a fair amount of information from Soviet archives that could and should have been used to present a more complete picture of Communist activity in the United States, as well as the other radical groups that were operating in the country at the time. The overall feeling I was left with was sure there were a few bombings and such, but it was irrational fear that prompted people to be concerned. That is unfortunate in my opinion because there was much to be concerned about, which should have been stated truthfully. Stating the truth of the matter does not justify the use of what was essentially a home grown spy network; it does however give the actual context instead of the mocking one the author presents.

The overall writing of the book flows poorly, jumping from one subject to the next. This book tells a story, one that is poorly written and shallow. A well written and relevant history story it is not.

Hagerdorn is at her best in this book in describing the 1919 Red Scare and connecting it with labor rights issues. (She has a nice thumbnail on the early rise to power of J. Edgar Hoover as part of this.)

She also does well, in the context of race relations, in noting Wilson's refusal to meet with prominent black leaders, and getting the State Department to deny them passports for the Paris Peace Conference.

But, she hamstrings herself with the "history of a year" concept by not delving deeper, much deeper, into Wilson's racism, starting with any 1912 campaign promises he made about equality.

Second, in the lead-up to the Senate vote on the Treaty of Versailles, she gives short shrift to the pig-headedness of both Wilson and Senate Majority Leader Lodge.

Third, rather than using the attempt of an interracial couple to marry in New Hampshire, and spending about 40 pages on it, why didn't she talk more about lynching in the North as well as the South, if she really wanted to look at civil rights in the North?

Fourth, she didn't do a good job linking 1919 to the Roaring '20s. That includes having a scant analysis of the 1920 electoral contest, not looking at Babe Ruth being on the cusp of transitioning baseball to the live ball era, nor looking at how the Roaring '20s were a decade of escapism.

And, other than burning Wilson in effigy, she says little about the suffragist movement and the progress of the 19th Amendment.

Also, for a theoretically in-depth book, Hagerdorn gives relatively little attention to how the world of physics, outside of Eddington, reacted to Einstein's theory of general relativity and its confirmation.

The book could have been 100 pages longer, well-written, and be the right length; it could be 100 pages shorter, in the same style, and too long. It could easily be longer, and better, because just such books have been written about Versailles alone. It could be shorter, and better, with much of the interracial marriage saga replaced with narrative of a few Northern lynchings, and more focus on sports and entertainment as they got ready to lead to the Roaring '20, plus a bit more detail on all the would-be presidential candidates.

Rebuttal to Jonathan Yardley

I disagree wholeheartedly with Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley's review of Ann Hagedorn's Savage Peace. A year is a perfectly legitimate and even desirable way to categorize the passage of human events in our country's history. His review is petty and does not accurately reflect the true spirit of the book.

For example, Mr. Yardley's statement "Wars don't begin on the first day of a year and end on the last, nor do presidencies or natural disasters or anything else except, of course, years themselves. But that doesn't prevent journalists, astrologers and other shady characters from attempting to set each year apart from every other and read its events and dominant personalities as if they were tea leaves."

Yardley, completely misses the point of the book. The timeline of history is how we understand and make sense of the past and the course of events during a particular year is absolutely quantifiable from the vantage point of hindsight.

"Tea leaves" are not the means of Hagedorn's relaying of the year 1918 as Mr. Yardley implies as he wholesale categorizes journalists as shady characters. Solid, meticulous and impassioned research is the engine behind the stories related. The fact that Hagedorn fleshed out the lives and activities of various people both well known and obscure during the year 1918 brings a color and vibrancy to history that educates as well as entertains.

Yardley's subsequent attacks on Hagedorn's prose and credentials as well as her choice of subjects is simply unproductive reviewing. His meanspiritedness overwhelms the great reporting and research that is the true hallmark of this book It is Hagedorn's choice to decide which stories paint the portrait of 1918 and as Yardley state himself "Obviously not everything that happened during this tumultuous and difficult year can be squeezed into a single book." Again, Hagedorn's passion and vividness for the subject of 1918 transforms the reading of history which can be overly erudite in less capable hands. To lambaste her prose style is myopic and Hagedorn's pedigree as a front page Wall Street Journal reporter more than legitimizes her. The fact that Mr. Yardley does not care for her writing style hardly qualifies his final diatribe of a paragraph.

This book is not only all-absorbing, it is fascinating and informative as well. The author states she put in 5 yrs of research to write it. I'm surprised it didn't take longer. Full of anecdotes, private as well as public, she paces the history and the individual stories so artfully, one cannot put the book down. At the end of the book one wonders what happened ultimately, after 1919, in the lives of the individuals portrayed. And unfortunately this book is a sad testament to moments in our own history when we allowed the perverse reality of war half-way around the world to blind us to our own war here at home.

If you are even remotely interested in this era of American history this is a "must read" book. It does a great job of putting into context the multitude of events and achievements of 1919 as well as our own failures here at home to even acknowledge one of our greatest wrongs perpetrated on our own American citizens.