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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2007 > April > 23 > Entry
a conversation with Ann Hagedorn
1919 was a strange year. You probably don’t remember it. World War One had just ended. America was in quite a state. Ann Hagedorn, an Oakwood native, has written an exceptional book about that very strange year.
The book is “Savage Peace—Hope and Fear in America—1919” (Simon & Schuster). I asked Hagedorn about it.
Vick: This book, how did you get the idea?
Ann: “Oh dear, that always seems like the simplest question and it never really is because it’s a combination of the flow in the unconscious mind that’s always happening, always pulling in new things, and then the very obvious, on the conscious level.
So, I would say that on the conscious level, I came up with the idea probably through three different things; one-just plain curiosity about the year between World War One and the Roaring Twenties.
I was curious about what happened in America in the aftermath of the war. I’ve always been fascinated by the aftermath of war so I was curious about a year that I knew nothing about except the Paris Peace Conference (at Versailles). So I wanted to know what happened in this country during that time. And, also, the president (Woodrow Wilson), was gone for most of the year so that made it doubly interesting to me.
I’m very interested in the aftermath of war as a topic anyhow because I think war is a habit that’s hard to break and we have this illusion; wars never end when we believe they end and when we are told they end. They never end in cease-fires, right?
They go on and on because it’s a mentality, it’s a habit that is very hard to break. So the devastation of war can go on and on in peacetime and so I thought that it would be interesting to look into the distance….Distant mirrors are important to us because it gives us the safety of distance to look at ourselves…
I think 1919 is the first year of the 20th Century. Wars don’t end the moment they say they do. Centuries don’t end exactly in the double ‘00’ years. I really think that’s the first year of the 20th Century. So much of what happened shaped the American Century.
I’ve lived most of my life in the 20th Century. I was curious about that year (1919), the sources of the kind of paradigms that have existed for most of my life in this country. Boy, that year is where it all began. So much happened, so much that shaped this nation for the rest of the century. For the people of my generation it shaped our identities in a way, our sense of who we are as Americans, who we are as citizens of a democracy.
I had this curiosity on an intellectual level. And then there was the curiosity that was unconscious…I think as we get older not only do we want to connect the dots between our nation’s past and present but I think that also we want answers to questions that popped up as we were kids…
It’s one thing to be drawn to a subject and it’s another to write a book about it. As I got into it I realized that my only regret was that I didn’t ask for a two volume set. Because there’s so much in that year, it’s unbelievable. It’s shocking. I had no idea when I was going into it how much happened.”
My conversation with Ann Hagedorn ran for the better part of an hour. Hopefully, this excerpt provided some sense of 1919, a turbulent year in America.
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