Where do we find our ideals, and what does it mean to live for them—and to risk dying for them? For Americans during World War I, these weren't abstract questions. Citing five heroic examples, Jeremy McCarter profiles Randolph Bourne, the bold social critic whose vision of America was decades ahead of its time; Max Eastman, the Greenwich Village poet who fought for the right to oppose the war; Walter Lippmann, a boy wonder of socialism who carved a unique niche with his reportage; Alice Paul, a suffragist leader who risked everything to win women the right to vote; and John Reed, the swashbuckling journalist who was an eyewitness to the Russian Revolution.