The dawn of the twentieth century was forged in hope and optimism—few could have imagined the magnitude of the changes that were about to overtake them. From 1900 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Age of Hope interviewees—from Europe, Asia, and the United States, and boasting an average age of 102—recount the part they played in the century's early history. Whether fighting on the barricades of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905 or campaigning for votes for women; attending the first meeting of the African National Congress in South Africa or witnessing the sinking of the Titanic, all remember the progress they lived through, the changes they fought for—and the clash of forces and ideas before World War I.

The people remember: the Paris Exposition of 1900, President McKinley's assassination, technology and consumerism, American democracy, Theodore Roosevelt, emigration to America, the first flight across the English Channel, mobilization and the tremors of war.