THE pippin of a story never ripened into print. Young Mr. Robsonβs formal report of the meeting, a staid bit of journalism, appeared in full. But not a word of that brilliant pen-picture which he had so affectionately worked out. With a flaccid hope that there might have been a mistake somewhere, its author perused the columns of The Record a second time. Nothing! Perhaps, whispered hope, they had held it over. Being of the βsketchβ order, it was good at any time. Daring greatly, he invaded the editorial sanctum where the proof-hooks hang. On the second he found his work of art. Upon the margin was rubber-stamped a single word: βKilled.β **
Review
βSamuel Hopkins Adams was the embodiment of the perplexing and confounding American nature careening between patriotism and bigotry, idealism and war mania. His book Common Cause: A Novel of War in America is a pertinent lesson for our times when values clash with each other and good men do things that they may regret. There is much here to ponder.ββAlex S. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and former director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (Alex S. Jones 2018-09-14)
β Common Cause , in this superbly annotated edition, is an unexpected and timely reminder of the distorted emotions that spike in moments of heightened patriotism. Samuel Hopkins Adams was a first-rate polemicist, and the target of his novel, while set a century ago during World War I, is a familiar bogeyman: The hyphenated American whose country of origin is at war with the United States. Back then it was German-Americans; later, it would be Japanese-Americans and Arab-Americans. Reading this wartime novel one hundred years after its first publication is a disturbing reminder of the enduring characteristics of xenophobia.ββPeter Finn, coauthor of The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book? (Peter Finn 2018-09-14)
About the Author
Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871β1958) was an American muckraker and World War I propagandist. He wrote for the New York Sun , McClureβs Magazine , and Collierβs Weekly and authored dozens of books, including Revelry and Common Cause. John Maxwell Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor at Louisiana State Universityβs Manship School of Mass Communication and a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author and editor of many books, including the award-winning Journalismβs Roving Eye: A History of American Newsgathering Abroad. Amy Solomon Whitehead is a Baton Rouge based writer and communications consultant.