Michael Kazin, "War Against War"

When is a war worth fighting? The question is as acute now as it was a century ago on the eve of U.S. entry into World War I. Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown, co-editor of Dissent, and the author of American Dreamers, The Populist Persuasion, and other histories of political philosophy, focuses on the 1914 work of what was then the country’s largest and best organized anti-war movement. Though these “anti-warriors” ultimately lost their battle, for three years they prevented Congress from the massive increase in manpower and weapons war required. Detailing the pacifists’ combined strategies of street demonstrations, peace candidates, and mobilization of suffrage and labor leaders, Kazin finds a laudatory model for today’s activists.

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