Young Radicals: In the War for American Ideals

This new history from McCarter (Hamilton: The Revolution) profiles five young radicals from the World War I era: Jack Reed, Walter Lippman, Max Eastman, Randolph Bourne, and Alice Paul. All except Paul, who was dedicated to women's suffrage, were involved in the socialist movement. McCarter zeroes in on their radical idealism and how they navigated turbulent times and backlashes against socialism, women's rights, and pacifism during World War I. Opening in 1912, this work traces the lives of its subjects as they started magazines such as The Masses, wrote groundbreaking articles, poetry, and plays, and staged pageants and parades for their causes. This book closes in 1920, and although women's suffrage was ratified, Eastman and Lippman had started to step away from their commitment to socialism in the face of the recent Palmer Raids. While oddly written in the present tense, McCarter's prose is engaging, moving, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.