Gilded Age and Progressive Era America

Book Reports

All graduate and post-baccalaureate students will write reviews on four scholarly books from four different sections listed below.  The books on the following list are considered scholarly The instructor may approve other scholarly books.  All books must be approved by the instructor.  Bring books for approval to the instructor's office during office hours, or make an appointment with the instructor.  To be acceptable, the text of a book must be at least 180 pages (not counting appendices, bibliography, index, or any other supplementary materials).  You may not choose two books from any section.

Each book review will consist of 1000-1500 words.  Reports will contain a statement of the book's thesis (check book reviews if you are not sure), a summary of the author's argument, a statement of why the book is important, the assessment of reviewers, and the student's own evaluation of the work.  The student will cite at least two scholarly book reviews that he/she has consulted.  Check Reviews in American History for books published after 1972.  Otherwise, check America: History and Life on the Meyer Library web page (under "Articles and Databases") to find other suitable reviews.  Reviews in American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Journal of the Gilded Ahe and Progressive Era, and the major regional and state journals are preferred. 

Book reviews are due at the beginning of class on  February 14, March 21, April 11, and May 17.    Late work will be penalized.  Email your book reviews to BobMiller@MissouriState.edu. 

Book Review Example

 

BOOK LIST

1. INDUSTRIALIZATION

Edward C. Kirkland, Industry Comes of Age: Business, Labor and Public Policy, 1880-1897  HC103 .E25 v.6

Robert Higgs, The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865-1914

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business HF5343 .C584

Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management T55.85 .T38 N44

Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism HC110 .C3 S58 1988

John Stover, American Railroads HE2751 .S7

Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867- 1960  (pp 1-231 = 1867-1921) HG 538 .F86

Tony Freyer, Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880-1990 HD3616 .G673 F79 1992

Sarah H. Gordon, Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829-1929  HE 2751 .G64 1997

 

2. INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL

Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought HD22 .U5 H6 1959

Sidney Fine, Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State HN57 .F54

George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 BT82.2 .M37

Oliver Zunz, Making America Corporate, 1870-1920 HD2785 .Z86 1990

Sheila M. Rothman, Woman's Place, A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present HQ1420 .R67

Robert McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity HQ1413 .B4 S54

Perry Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880-1920 HV4201.S6 D84 1983

David Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-1900 HQ125 .U6 P57

T.J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture

 

3. THE AMERICAN WEST

Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains 978 W384

Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land F591 .S65

Rodman Paul, The Far West and the Great Plains in Transition, 1859-1900 F595 .P27 1988

Robert Dykstra, Cattle Towns HD9433 .U5 K215

Gilbert Fite, The Farmer's Frontier S441 .F48 1966

Glenda Riley, The Female Frontier HQ1438 .G75 R55 1988

Sandra L. Myres, Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 HQ1410 .M96 1982

Ralph K. Andrist, The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians E78 .W5 A593 1969

Robert M. Utley, Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890 E81 .U747 1984

Robert M. Utley, The Last Days of the Sioux Nation E99 .D1 U9

Richard White, Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own

 

4. THE NEW SOUTH

Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South F215 .A94 1992

C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South

Gaines M. Foster, Ghost of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913 F215 .F694 1987

Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation  HC107 .A13 R28

Gavin Wright, Old South, New South HC107 .A13 W67 1986

Jonathan M. Wiener, Social Origins of the New South (Alabama) HN79 .A4 W53

Ann Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow E185.61 .86 1966

Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1900 E185.2 R23

Paul M. Gaston, The New South Creed F209 .G3 1976

David Carleton, Mill and Town in South Carolina

Stephen Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism F290 .H33

 

5. GILDED AGE POLITICS

Matthew Josephson, The Politicos 973 J77

H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896 E660 .M6

Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 F354 .J4

John G. Sproat, "The Best Men": Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age E661 .S65

Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865-1879 HG604 .U5

Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late-Nineteenth-Century America E661 .K27

Tom Terrill, The Tariff, Politics, and American Foreign Policy, 1874-1901 HF1755 .T29

Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892 JK1965 .K53

Stanley Hirshson, Farewell to the Bloody Shirt: Northern Republicans and the Southern Negro

Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era

 

6. IMMIGRANTS AND URBAN AMERICA

Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914

Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted E169.1 .U76

John Bodnar, The Transplanted E184 .A1 B59 1985

Roger Daniels, Coming to America  (pp. 1-284 = Colonial to 1924)

Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in an American Metropolis  HN80 .B7 T45

David Ward, Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in 19th Century America HT123 .W22

Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 HT123 .B67

Seymour Mandelbaum, Boss Tweed's New York F128.47 .M28

Zane Miller, Boss Cox's Cincinnati JS738 .M5

Howard P. Chudacoff and Judith E. Smith, The Evolution of American Urban Society

David Goldfield and Blaine Brownell, Urban America

Lyle Dorsett, The Pendergast Machine

 

7. LABOR

Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America HD8072 .G98 1977

Gerald Rosenblum, Immigrant Workers: Their Impact on American Labor Radicalism HD8081 .A5 R67

Leon Fink, Workingman's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics HD8055 .K7 F56 1983

Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States HD6095 .K449 1982

Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920 HD8072 .R76

Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialism and the American Workers, 1865-1920 HD8072 .D846 1985

Harold C. Livesay, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America HD6509 .G57 l58

Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist HX84.D3 .S23 1982

Ray Ginger, Eugene V. Debs: A Biography

Phillip Foner, The Great Labor Uprising of 1877

 

8. THE NATION IN CRISIS

John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 E184 .A1 H5

Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy HX846 .C4 A97 1984

Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930 HD7544 .P9 B9

Carlos Schwantes, Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey HD8072 .S354 1985

Charles Hoffman, The Depression of the Nineties HC105 .H8 1970

J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910   JK1936 .A2 K68

Jay Martin, Harvests of Change: American Literature, 1865-1914 PS214 .M35

John Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition HN57 .T48 1983

 

9. THE POPULIST REVOLT

Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism

Gene Clanton, Populism: The Humane Preference E661 .C56 1991

Worth Robert Miller, Oklahoma Populism JK2374.05 M54 1987

Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment E661 .G672 1978

Robert W. Larson, Populism in the Mountain West F721 .L27 1986

John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt JK2372 .H5

Peter Argersinger, Populism and Politics: William Alfred Peffer and ... (Kansas) JK2372.A74

Gregg Cantrell, Kenneth and John B. Rayner and the Limits of Southern Dissent  (African-American Populist)

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (Populism, Progressivism, and the New Deal)  E743 .H63

Jeffrey Ostler, Prairie Populism

Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbackers: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance, 1865-1896

 

10. IMPERIALISM

Walter LaFeber, The New Empire E661.7 .L2

H. Wayne Morgan, America's Road to Empire E715 .M85

David Healy, U.S. Expansionism E713 .H45

Robert Beisner, Twelve Against Empire E713 .B47

_____, From the Old Diplomacy to the New E661.7 .B44 1975

Ernest May, Imperial Democracy E661 .M34

David Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 E715 .T7

Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansionism, 1890-1945   E744 .R82 1982

Thomas J. McCormick, China Market: America's Quest for Informal Empire HF3120.M28

John Morgan Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags (Philippine Insurrection) DS679 .G38

Glenn A. May, Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900-1913 DS685 .M28

 

11. PROGRESSIVISM

Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform

Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order E661 .W58

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (Populism, Progressivism, and the New Deal) E743 .H63

James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State E743 .W44

David Thelen, The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900 F586 .T47

Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism HC105 .H35

John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: TR & WW E176.1 .C7919 1983

Otis Graham, Encore for Reform E743 .G7

Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt E711 .G68

George Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt E756 .M85

Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson E766 .C44 1992

Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era E766 .L5

Morton Keller, Regulating a New Economy

John Milton Cooper, The Pivotal Decades, 1900-1920

Dewey Grantham, Southern Progressivism

 

12. PROGRESSIVE SPINOFFS

Louis Filler, The Muckrakers (Update of Crusaders for American Liberalism) HN57 .E47 1976

James R. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism JK2391 .S6 G73

James Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement HV5089 .T55 1963

Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America,1900- 1918 HQ144 .R76 1982

John D. Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform E743 .B83

Melvin Holli, Reform in Detroit: Hazen Pingree... JS838 .H64

Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency 333.7 H334

Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement JK1896 .K7

Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform HV4194 .A3 D3 1967

Robert H. Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform E747 .W59

Mary Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920 HQ1426 .B82

Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education

Garin Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red  (Socialists in Oklahoma)

 

13. WORLD WAR I AND AFTERMATH

Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921 D619 .F34 1985

Ernest R. May, The World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917 D619 .M383

Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order   E767.1 .K56 1992

N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution E768 .L62

David Kennedy, Over Here D570.1 .K43

Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson & the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight... D645 .A42 1987

Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War and Peace E768 .L67 1979

Walter Millis, Road to War: America, 1914-1917 D610 .M47 1970

William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1930 E743.5 .P7

Maurine Weiner Greenwald, Women, War and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States HD6095 .G72

Robert Burner, The Politics of Provincialism

David Trask, The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917-1918