The Gist

Do Radicals Change the World?

Author Jeremy McCarter on the five people who changed the course of America in 1917.

American reporter, writer, and revolutionary John Reed in Moscow circa 1917–18.

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Author Jeremy McCarter (co-writer of Hamilton: The Revolution with Lin-Manuel Miranda) has written a new book tracing five American radicals from the 1910s and ’20s. “I had thought this was going to be a book about a chapter of progress in history we could learn from,” says McCarter. “But 1917 is a lot closer to what I thought I would see in my lifetime.” Young Radicals is available now.

In the Spiel, a lot of people really, really did not like Otto Warmbier.

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