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Pacifists who fought against the Second World War faced insurmountable odds \\u2014 but their resistance, philosophy, and strategies fostered a tradition of activism that shaped America right up to the present day. Daniel Akst\\u2019s new book takes us into the wild, heady, and uncertain times of America on the brink of a world war, following four fascinating resisters \\u2014 four figures who would subsequently become famous political thinkers and activists \\u2014 and their daring exploits: David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin.

Shermer and Akst discuss: war \\u2022 the left (old and new) \\u2022 religious liberals \\u2022 American Firsters and Isolationists \\u2022 cluster of heterodoxy: anti-war/militarism, but also anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid, anti-power of the state, pro-labor, pro the rights of minorities, individual liberty on matters such as abortion and gender, anti-segregation \\u2022 internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps \\u2022 civil disobedience (Thoreau, Garrison, Gandhi) \\u2022 non-violent protests \\u2022 moral equivalency \\u2022 Just War Theory \\u2022 Military Industrial Complex \\u2022 moral progress with and without religion \\u2022 the rise of Christian nationalism and authoritarianism.

Daniel Akst is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate and other leading publications. He was a board member of the National Book Critics Circle, and has taught at Bard College and in the Bard Prison Initiative. He lives in New York\\u2019s Hudson Valley.