Seekers and Partisans

Tells the stories of individual Americans who strove to understand their nation and its place in the world between 1935–1941.

This book tells the fascinating stories of individual Americans who left America to explore the world in the interwar years. It sits at the intersection of studies on the interwar era, the Second World War, and twentieth-century US affairs, and will interest students, scholars, and general readers.This book tells the stories of individual Americans, some well-known, and some not, who strove to understand their nation and its place in the world in the roiled years 1935-1941. David Mayers splits these individuals into 'seekers' and 'partisans'. Primarily disillusioned idealists, both on the left and right, they hurried from America to explore and be part of a different world. Among those featured are John Robinson, a Black aviator who in 1935 led the Ethiopian air force against the Italian invasion; Agnes Smedley, who joined the Chinese communists during the Sino-Japanese war; eminent Black civil rights theorist W. E. B. Du Bois; Helen Keller, an advocate of the seeing and hearing-impaired; architect Philip Johnson; Ezra Pound, a lauded poet who championed Mussolini; and Anna Louise Strong, drawn to Stalin's USSR. The lives and stories of this diverse group shed light on the contested nature of American ambitions, aims, and national purpose and destabilizes what it means to be 'American'.