Thursday, February 19, 2009

Savage Peace or Crime Scene

Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America 1919

Author: Ann Hagedorn

Written with the sweep of an epic novel and grounded in extensive research into contemporary documents, Savage Peace is a striking portrait of American democracy under stress. It is the surprising story of America in the year 1919.
In the aftermath of an unprecedented worldwide war and a flu pandemic, Americans began the year full of hope, expecting to reap the benefits of peace. But instead, the fear of terrorism filled their days. Bolshevism was the new menace, and the federal government, utilizing a vast network of domestic spies, began to watch anyone deemed suspicious. A young lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover headed a brand-new intelligence division of the Bureau of Investigation (later to become the FBI). Bombs exploded on the doorstep of the attorney general's home in Washington, D.C., and thirty-six parcels containing bombs were discovered at post offices across the country. Poet and journalist Carl Sandburg, recently returned from abroad with a trunk full of Bolshevik literature, was detained in New York, his trunk seized. A twenty-one-year-old Russian girl living in New York was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for protesting U.S. intervention in Arctic Russia, where thousands of American soldiers remained after the Armistice, ostensibly to guard supplies but in reality to join a British force meant to be a warning to the new Bolshevik government.
In 1919, wartime legislation intended to curb criticism of the government was extended and even strengthened. Labor strife was a daily occurrence. And decorated African-American soldiers, returning home to claim the democracy for which they had risked their lives, were badly disappointed. Lynchings continued, raceriots would erupt in twenty-six cities before the year ended, and secret agents from the government's "Negro Subversion" unit routinely shadowed outspoken African-Americans.
Adding a vivid human drama to the greater historical narrative, Savage Peace brings 1919 alive through the people who played a major role in making the year so remarkable. Among them are William Monroe Trotter, who tried to put democracy for African-Americans on the agenda at the Paris peace talks; Supreme Court associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who struggled to find a balance between free speech and legitimate government restrictions for reasons of national security, producing a memorable decision for the future of free speech in America; and journalist Ray Stannard Baker, confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, who watched carefully as Wilson's idealism crumbled and wrote the best accounts we have of the president's frustration and disappointment.
Weaving together the stories of a panoramic cast of characters, from Albert Einstein to Helen Keller, Ann Hagedorn brilliantly illuminates America at a pivotal moment.

Publishers Weekly

Former Wall Street Journalstaffer Hagedorn (Beyond the River) makes a stylish entry into the history-of-a-year genre with this account of America in upheaval in the wake of WWI. In 1919, both the world and the U.S. were in need of reconstruction: soldiers returning from war needed jobs, and the influenza epidemic wasn't quite under control. Two threads Hagedorn follows are middle-class Americans' fear of Bolshevism, and the struggles of black Americans. U.S. Attorney-General Palmer instigated raids to try to root out leftist activists, and in what may have been "the State Department's first official interference in African-American politics," the agency denied black Americans' request for passports to travel to France and speak to the Paris Peace Conference about racial equality. In a year rife with lynchings in the Deep South, W.E.B. Du Bois, who had urged black Americans to shelve their grievances and fight the Germans, now argued that blacks, having served the nation, deserved to be accorded civil rights. Still, some exciting cultural developments presaged the roaring '20s: F. Scott Fitzgerald's star rose, and the nation's first dial telephones were installed in Norfolk, Va. This vivid account of a nation in tumult and transition is absorbing, and the nexus of global and national upheaval is chillingly relevant. (Apr.)

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.



Table of Contents:

Prologue: Armistice Day 1918     1
Winter: Jubilation and Hope
Gods of War and Peace     19
Spies Are Everywhere     24
Christmas at Villa Lewaro     37
Women and Molasses     46
The List     53
A Mere Slip of a Girl     61
Polar Bears in Peril     80
Sergeant Henry Johnson     91
Trotter and the Passports     104
The Magisterial Wand     114
Blinders     124
Shuffleboard     134
In Like a Lion     143
Out Like a Lion     155
Spring: Fear
Inner Light     163
Make-Believe Riots and Real Bombs     175
It's in the Mail     188
Monsieur Trotter     203
302 Seconds in May     210
What Happened on R Street     218
War of a Different Sort     226
Thrilling Feats     234
Summer: Passion
Missichusetts     249
Paris     262
Independence Day 1919     269
The Narrow Path     279
Miss Puffer Insane?     285
That Certain Point     297
Weapons in Their Hats     308
Kingof the Index     323
"I'll Stay With You, Mary"     334
Autumn: Struggle
"The Right to Happiness"     345
Tugs-of-War and of the Heart     356
Autumn Leaflets     364
Not Exactly Paradise     376
Albert in Wonderland     386
Greatness     391
Armistice Day 1919     398
Falling Ladders     404
All Aboard     408
Boughs of Glory     417
Epilogue: Endings and Beginnings     425
Notes on Sources     447
Notes     455
Selected Bibliography     499
Acknowledgments     511
Index     517

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Crime Scene: How Forensic Science Solves

Author: W Mark Dal

The Crime Scene: How Forensic Science Works is an affordable trade paperback for those who want to learn more about forensic science and how it is used to solve criminal cases.

This book will appeal to the college student who is studying forensic science, or the person who is interested in learning more about it for a career or course of study in criminal justice. Unlike the popular trade books out there on crime scene investigation, this book doesn’t just focus on the gory details of a crime and how it is solved; rather, it introduces the student to the science of the investigation and what it takes to break a case.

In addition, it will be aligned to criminal justice curriculum and the education of investigators-to-be.



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