Young Radicals

“Inspiring and entertaining.”—David Brooks, The New York Times

“It’s not difficult to see why [Lin-Manuel] Miranda would have been attracted to [Jeremy] McCarter as a writing partner. . . . Young Radicals is a brilliant, even inspiring book, full of whip-smart analysis that demands to be read and argued over.”—The Wall Street Journal

“One of the exciting new nonfiction books this summer.”—Time

“In this lively, if at times swooningly earnest, portrait of artists, activists, writers and intellectuals, McCarter chronicles a moment in American history when ‘socialism, progressivism, modernism, and feminism all exploded at once.’”—Newsday

“A brisk pace and sympathetic portraits make for an entertaining, well-researched history of a decade marked by ebullience, hope, and pain.”—Kirkus Reviews

“McCarter’s prose is engaging, moving, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. Recommended for young radicals today who want to understand past attempts to change the world in the face of repression.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“In this poetic, impassioned book, written with a fierce moral urgency, Jeremy McCarter conjures up a clutch of brilliant dreamers—poets, feminists, journalists, and political rebels—whose freewheeling ideas collided with the carnage of World War I and the repressive atmosphere of the postwar Red Scare. More than just an eloquent requiem for its disillusioned young idealists, ambushed by a savage turn in history, it extracts enduring lessons of historical change that redeem their often heartbreaking suffering. Young Radicals provides just the literary antidote we need to counter the cynical forces of reaction in the Age of Trump.”—Ron Chernow, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Alexander Hamilton

“Jeremy McCarter’s gripping exploration of what drives young people toward revolutionary acts, in even the most desperate days, could not be more relevant to our current political moment. A crucial meditation on progress.”—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies

“At an increasingly polarizing time in American history, Jeremy McCarter’s compelling work on these early twentieth-century American activists provides much-needed perspective and insight. Engaging, thought-provoking, and wonderfully intimate, this book should inspire artists, writers, activists, and anyone who values peace and justice in a time of conflict and war.”—Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy

“Young Radicals is a highly dramatic, beautiful, and precise story of incredibly brave young people encountering bigotry, greed, ignorance, fear, and murderous rage, all the usual enemies of hope, decency, generosity of spirit, clarity, and courage of thought; it’s the story of their splendid refusals, their well-intended and sometimes fatal compromises, their stunning willingness to sacrifice everything for the country and the world with which they are magnificently, heartbreakingly in love. What makes it essential as well as thoroughly entertaining reading is the incontrovertible argument it makes on behalf of the persistence and power of truth, of the best impulses of our country and of humankind, even in the face of despair-inducing reversals and shattering defeats. As painful as it is to watch Jeremy McCarter’s doomed idealists lose their individual battles, it’s enormously moving and (sorry, but there’s no other word for it) inspiring to understand how, through struggle, they changed the world.”—Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angels in America and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Lincoln