In the spring of 1917, America went to war with an innocent determination to remake the world. When the smoke lifted in November 1918, the nation emerged with its sense of purpose shattered, with its certainties shaken, and with a new and unwelcome self-knowledge. Seventy-five thousand American soldiers had lost their lives, and back home a Pandora's box of suspicion and surveillance had been opened. Meirion and Susie Harries reveal how the fight to preserve freedom abroad led to the erosion of freedom at home. They provide the story of the fifty-billion-dollar war that gave birth to the Selective Service Act, threatened labor rights, stoked the fires of racial and religious intolerance, and concentrated the nation's wealth into fewer hands than ever before. Both absorbing and persuasive, The Last Days of Innocence tells the untold story of the war that rudely thrust Americans into an uncertain future - a war whose consequences are our legacy today. | The Last Days of Innocence by Meirion Harries, Paperback | Indigo Chapters