Red scare

The years after World War I produced some of the most turbulent and frightening chapters in American history, a stretch marked by suspicion, rumor, and widespread hysteria. This book follows that episode, a time when fear of radicals spread across the country and the government's crackdown became one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in the nation's past. The Palmer raids sit at the center of the account, alongside the labor unrest of the period: the Seattle general strike, the Boston police strike, the major coal and steel walkouts, and the bombings, shootings, and street riots that came with them. Although the events are gripping on their own, the author argues that they matter well beyond the page. Americans of that era were gripped by irrational dread and swayed by inflammatory propaganda, and the book suggests that similar pressures still shape public life during the cold war.