Written with the sweep of an epic novel and grounded in extensive research, this is a striking portrait of America in the aftermath of an unprecedented worldwide war and a flu
pandemic; it’s the biography of the year 1919.

*    *    *    *

This is the story of the aftermath of World War I in America told through three interweaving narratives that center on the main themes of race relations, civil liberties, and spying. It’s about what happened in America while President Woodrow Wilson was at the peace conference in Paris. The book brings alive a time when Americans were deeply divided over the issues of domestic espionage, free speech, immigration, racism, and U.S. interventions abroad. From William Monroe Trotter, W.E.B. Dubois, Madam Walker, and WWI African- American hero Sgt. Henry Johnson to young J. Edgar Hoover, renowned attorney Harry Weinberger, poet and journalist Carl Sandburg, and Albert Einstein, this intensely colorful and insightful portrait of democracy under extreme duress “reads like a wondrous novel, except that it is all true” as author Walter Isaacson noted.

*    *    *    *

“Fluently written, constantly surprising-and timely, in a between-the-lines sort of way.” – Kirkus  (Starred Review)

*    *    *    *

“Fast-paced and engaging, Savage Peace is a potent reminder of the fragility of civil liberties and the power of conspiratorial fantasies propagated by true believers and opportunists alike during times of war and uncertainty. Hagedorn tells this important, complicated and often-unsettling story well, conveying effectively the drama and intensity of the year’s events as well as their contemporary and longer-term significance." – Chicago Tribune

*    *    *    *

“Savage Peace reads like a wondrous novel, except that it is all true. Thoroughly researched and insightful, it spins together the fascinating threads of 1919. And what a wonderful cast of characters! From Eddington and Einstein to DuBois and Wilson, they all come alive. This book is so joyful you’ll forget that it’s serious history.” – Author Walter Isaacson

*    *    *    *

Brutally brilliant, wrenchingly informative, Hagedorn has written a work for the ages.” –Dayton Daily News

*    *    *    *

Why in the world would anyone read fiction when there are people like Ann Hagedorn out there telling us true stories that beggar anything the imagination can produce?” – Nick Clooney, Cincinnati Post

*    *    *    *

“SAVAGE PEACE is Ann Hagedorn’s brilliantly conceived, meticulously researched, and beautifully written biography of the year 1919.  Now we have a historian who is up to the challenge of vividly demonstrating not only 1919’s historical significance, but also its political and cultural relevance to us in the era of 9/11 and the Patriot Act.” – William M. Tuttle, Jr. author of :Daddy’s Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America” and “Children and Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919”

*    *    *    *

“This vivid account of a nation in tumult and transition is absorbing, and the nexus of  global and national upheaval is chillingly relevant.”  – Publishers Weekly

*    *    *    *

“Ann Hagedorn gives us a grand reappraisal of the American context for the SAVAGE PEACE of 1919.  Everyone interested in the path to our present struggles and future alternatives will want to read this splendid and important book.”-Blanche Wiesen Cook, Professor of History, John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; author of Eleanor Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2, The Defining Years, 1933-1938

*    *    *    *

“The Great War in Europe left this country both in sinister shadow and bright promise.  Ann Hagedorn has written a book with nuanced detail and novelistic narrative.  Show me a more crucial year and then find me a better writer to tell the story: can’t be done!” –Noah Adams, NPR commentator and author of The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright

*    *    *    *

“A journalist who has published books on the Underground Railroad and international kidnapping, Hagedorn excels when narrating the struggles of the oppressed . . . Hagedorn eschews a thesis, shoots from the hip and weaves together personal sketches to capture the essence of an era. The results are dazzling.”  – Austin American-Statesman