War Fever

"In War Fever, celebrated sports historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith explore the monumental changes taking place in Boston during the Great War through the stories of three men: Karl Muck, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra;Charles Whittlesey, a Harvard Law Student who was called to service and became an unlikely leader; and perhaps the most famous baseball player of all time, the Red Sox's Babe Ruth. Each was cast into the turmoil of the war, and each emerged as a public figure of one sort or another: one a villain, one a hero,one an athlete.Throughout the war, Bostonians lived on high alert; fearing an attack on the city's harbor, mines were anchored in the bay and a wire net stretched across the channels to prevent German submarines from encroaching. In an ethnically diverse city, fraught with tension between interventionists and pacifists, the war unleashed intolerance, hostility, and xenophobia. Karl Muck, after allegedly refusing to perform the"Star-Spangled Banner" at a symphony concert, was detained by federal agents and accused of espionage. His arrest soon became a national scandal as he was labeled a "dangerous enemy alien" and sent to an internm