A Half-Century of Paradox, 1900-1945

Americans awakened near the dawn of the 20th century to new roles in industry, culture, and diplomacy as the nation flexed its military muscles. In the first half of the 20th century the United States won two world wars, became the locomotive of the world's economy, and produced innovative fiction, music, and technology. It was, in many respects, a golden age. Yet, like many who prospect for gold, Americans sometimes came up empty-handed. The age can be described as Charles Dickens described his time, as a glass half-empty, half-full. In the half-century there were times when we guzzled and times when we thirsted. It was a time of euphoria, tragedy, reason, and chaos, when the good side of humanity battled the evil side almost to a draw.

The economy reached dizzying heights and plunged to unimagined depths. Women won the right to vote, and we lost the right to drink. Southern blacks were voteless and impoverished, and the Ku Klux Klan flourished. The gate to immigrants was slammed shut. Women and children labored in sweatshops, and, with minorities, were barred from many unions. Anti-Semitism, polite and hysterical, was common. Yet, in the end, we pulled together to save the planet from tyranny and received the unexpected benefit of lifting ourselves out of the Great Depression.

It was an epoch when the unusual was commonplace, a time of paradox. Who would have guessed that a baseball player would be paid more than the president? That a man in a wheelchair would be elected president, not once but four times? That we would win two world wars, and lose more persons to death in a flu epidemic than in both wars combined? Or that we would lose more workers to industrial accidents on the home front than in battle in World War II? During that war, life expectancy in America would actually increase. Certainly these events seem paradoxical.

Yet in describing a Time of Paradox I do not employ the word "paradox" in a literal sense but in a symbolic manner—something that seemed accidental, an oxymoron, deceiving, a magician's trick. The story of the Time of Paradox is exhilarating and humbling. We conquered Hitler yet failed to cure the common cold.

A Time of Paradox is a story of a civilization in the process of growing up. By the standards of the world's great civilizations, of China, India, Persia, Rome, Greece, and Egypt, the United States was an adolescent and it made adolescent mistakes. Yet it experienced the joy of discovery, mood swings, and opportunity. This was a time of bold adventure, of loss, grief, and trauma, to be sure, but also a time of learning, maturing, and finding wisdom. Few—such as Alexander the Great—are given the opportunity to lead at such an early age. Some, such as Theodore Roosevelt, embraced the awakening as if tromping to a Sousa march. Others embarked upon the ocean of responsibility soberly, aware that if their country was to call the tune it would have to pay the piper.

Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach, California. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-127100].

Under two almost-great presidents in its Era of Awakening, America experienced both a renaissance and a reformation. Seldom have two star-studded presidencies illuminated the American firmament in a single generation as those of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt brought a child's enthusiasm, and, some complained, a child's maturity, to the presidency. An example of the latter is that he enjoyed playing at war and considered it heroic. Yet as president he never fought a war, and he won a Nobel Prize for ending one. Roosevelt took delight in surprising. His youth, vigor, intellectual energy, and physical robustness seemed appropriate for the industrial might of the new industrial Goliath. Yet he was a prudent, pragmatic politician who enacted significant domestic reforms but fell short of greatness because no challenge occurred that allowed him to respond with great deeds.

His successor was offered such a challenge and...