In the fall of 1918, Boston's streets emptied as fear of the deadly Spanish flu spread, even as newspapermen aggressively sought to discredit anyone who looked or sounded German. Capturing a tense and delirious moment in American life, this multifaceted history tells the stories of three men: Karl Muck, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, accused of being an enemy spy; Charles Whittlesey, a Harvard law graduate who became an unlikely hero in Europe; and the most famous baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth, poised to revolutionize the game he loved.
"An entertaining reminder that American hero worship, media hype, and fierce nationalism haven't changed much in a century."—Kirkus Reviews