The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Recent Episodes

Michael Patrick Cullinane

The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a free podcast about the seismic transitions that took place in the United States from the 1870s to 1920s. It's for students, teachers, researchers, history buffs, and anyone who wants to learn more about how our past connects us to the present. It is hosted by Michael Patrick Cullinane, a professor of U.S. history and the author of several books about American politics and international relations. 


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The intersections of race and class or work and power has tantalizing effects on our understanding of history. It can reshape our appreciation of socio-cultural norms and the way we define the Gilded Age. Joseph Jewell's latest book White Man's Work: Race and Middle-Class Mobility into the Progressive Era takes the reader through the changing social structures caused by industrialization and Reconstruction, and the attendant anxieties these changes wrought among White communities.

Essential Reading:

Joseph O. Jewell, White Man's Work: Race and Middle-Class Mobility into the Progressive Era (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Arnoldo De León, The Tejano Community, 1836-1900 (1982).

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (2004).

Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (2003).

Raúl A. Ramos, Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861 (2008).

Philip F. Rubio, There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality (2010).

Eric S. Yellin, Racism in the Nation's Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson's America (2013).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

This episode is a feed drop from the Brattleboro Literary Cocktail Hour, a monthly event hosted by the Brattleboro Literary Festival. I am in conversation with Ed O'Keefe, the author of The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women who Created a President. Given Roosevelt's lifetime overlaps the Gilded Age and Progressive Era quite neatly, and the women in his life have gotten short shrift, I thought this would be of interest to podcast listeners.

Please also check out the podcast sponsor SHGAPE (Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era)


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

SHOW SPONSOR SHGAPE & The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

I have never thought of funeral directors as the preservationists of Gilded Age architecture, but they are. Thanks to Dr. Dean Lampros's cross-disciplinary research on the cultural history of these residential funeral parlours we see the remnants of the Gilded Age in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dean joins me to discuss his new book, and the amazing research he has compiled.

Essential Reading:

Dean Lampros, Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home in America (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Jessica Mitford, The American Way of Death (1963).

Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (2002).

Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2004).

Gary Laderman, Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America (2005).

Marilyn Yalom, The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds (2008).

Suzanne Smith, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (2010).

Michael Rosenow, Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865 – 1920 (2015).

Caitlin Doughty, From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2018).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Irish are best known for migrating to American cities along the east coast, notably Boston and New York. Dr. Alan Noonan joins the show to explain how the Irish also moved to the American West, and settled among mining communities in places like Butte and Virginia City. Noonan's narrative is rich with stories about race, class, religion, and imagined communities, making his book a must read for scholars of industrialization and migration.

Essential Reading:

Alan J. M. Noonan, Mining Irish-American Lives: Western Communities from 1849 to 1920 (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Michael MacGowan, The Hard Road to Klondike (2003).

Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988).

Janet Floyd, Claims and Speculation: Mining and Writing in the Gilded Age (2012).

Elliot J. Gorn, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (2015).

David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1920 (1989).

Liping Zhu, A Chinaman's Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (2000).

J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle for the Soul of America (1998).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

There are a few people that embody a period. Isabella Stewart Gardner knew many of the the movers and shakers of the Gilded Age and lived from 1840-1924. Her story, and her compulsion to buy the art of the age, makes her a great lens through which to understand the Gilded Age. Dr. Natalie Dykstra joins the show to discuss her latest biography of Bella.

Essential Reading:

Natalie Dykstra, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner (2024).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Thousands of Christian missionaries left the United States in search of souls to save. They often found trouble. And almost always became non-governmental diplomats, whether as translators or unofficial representatives. Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz joins the show to explain how they influenced international relations in unexpected ways.

Essential Reading:

Emily Conroy-Krutz, Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations (2024).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Jacob Schiff, Joseph Seligman, Marcus Goldman, and the Lehman Brothers have one thing in common. All were Jewish immigrants who made a fortune as financiers in the United States. Best-selling author and journalist Daniel Schulman tells their story and explains how left an indelible mark on American society.

Essential Reading:

Daniel Schulman, The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Susie Pak, Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J. P. Morgan (2013).

Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve (2016).

Christopher Shaw, Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic (2019).

Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild (1998).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

In this special episode, The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is taken over by popular podcast 2 Complicated 4 History and hosts Dr Lynn Price Robbins and Isaac Loftus. 2 Complicated 4 History is a show that examines the "deleted scenes" of history. In each episode, a different guest bringing a fresh perspective to the history you thought you knew.

This episode leads with the question: Is it the government's job to legislate the social behavior of its citizens? In the Progressive Era, many elites believed that it was, and they created institutions to "fix" non compliance. Lynn and Isaac are joined by Dr. Erin Bush to discuss child delinquency and social control at the turn of the twentieth century.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Economics might study trade, commerce, and financial markets, but the discipline explores human interaction as much as any other subject. The idea of free trade, especially the idea espoused by Richard Cobden, intersected with the millennial pursuit of peace like two halves of the same walnut. Marc William Palen joins the show to explain the legacy of Cobden and others in the global story of free trade and pacifism.

Essential Reading:

Marc William Palen, Pax Economica: Left Wing Visions of a Free Trade World (2024).

Recommended Reading:

Johanna Bockman, Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism (2011).

Eric Helleiner, The Neomercantilists: A Global Intellectual History (2021).

Douglas Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (1998).

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (2018).

Thomas Zeiler, Capitalist Peace: A History of American Free-Trade Internationalism (2022).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

When did modern intelligence gathering begin? The Gilded Age, of course. Dr. Mark Stout joins the show to discuss his book World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence. The advent of new technologies and the necessities of modern war show how a major transition occurred between the Civil War and World War II.

Essential Reading:

Mark Stout, World War I and the Foundations of American Intelligence (2024).

Further Reading:

T. R. Brereton, Educating the U.S. Army: Arthur L. Wagner and Reform, 1875-1905 (2000).

Jeffrey M. Dorwart, The Office of Naval Intelligence: The Birth of America's First Intelligence Agency, 1865-1918 (1979).

Lori A. Henning, Harnessing the Airplane: American and British Cavalry Responses to a New Technology, 1903-1939 (2019).

Brian McAllister Linn, "Intelligence and Low-Intensity Conflict in the Philippine War, 1899-1902," Intelligence and National Security 6, no. 1 (1991): 90-114.

Betsy Rohaly Smoot, From the Ground Up: American Cryptology during World War I (2023).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The white dresses of suffragists stand out as one example of women's fashion that made a statement. Einav Rabinovitch-Fox joins the show to discuss her book Dressed for Freedom: American Feminism and the Politics of Women’s Fashion and the many ways that style brought the substance of women's activism into the public discourse.

Essential Reading:

Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Dressed for Freedom: American Feminism and the Politics of Women’s Fashion (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Elizabeth Block, Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion (2021).

Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (1999).

Patricia Campbell Warner, When the Girls Came Out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear (2006).

Patricia A. Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art (2003).

Deborah Saville, “Dress and Culture in Greenwich Village,” in Twentieth-Century American Fashion, ed. Linda Walters and Patricia A. Cunningham (2005).

Allison Lange, Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women's Suffrage Movement (2020).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The rise of the Southern Pacific Railroad in California owes a great deal to the citrus industry and vice versa. Ben Jenkins joins the show to discuss how these two industries came to define the state during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

Benjamin Jenkins, The Octopus's Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Genevieve Carpio, Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race (2019).

Jared Farmer, Trees in Paradise: The Botanical Conquest of California (2017).

Phoebe Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (2008).

Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1950-1930 (2007).

Douglas Sackman, Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden (2007).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

How much can a president do to shepherd the economy? The question has bedevilled the inhabitants of the White House since the office came into being, and it has material relevance for elections, democracy, social policy, and international relations. Mark Zachary Taylor joins the show to explain his findings on this topic, and to discuss his latest book Presidential Leadership in Feeble Times.

Essential Reading:

Mark Zachary Taylor, Presidential Leadership in Feeble Times: Explaining Executive Power in the Gilded Age (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Edward O. Frantz (ed.), A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents, 1865 - 1881 (2014).

Mark Wahlgren Summers, Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics (2005).

Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (2020).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Are you stuck for that showstopper holiday roast or side dish? Becky Diamond's latest book, The Gilded Age Cookbook is there to help. Go back in time to see how families ate during the holidays. And please try the "devilled spaghetti." The recipe is listed here!

Essential Reading:

Becky Diamond, The Gilded Age Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from America's Golden Era (2023).

Recommended Recipe (Full Recipe in Book):

Butter six ramekins or Texas-size muffin pans and set aside.

Cook the spaghetti until al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain and allow to cool. When cool, chop finely and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk together to form a paste. Add the milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Turn down to low and add the chopped eggs, salt, cayenne, onion powder, nutmeg, and parsley.

Add the spaghetti to the sauce, stirring until combined. Using a large ladle, divide spaghetti mixture among the ramekins or muffin pan cups.

Mix bread crumbs and melted butter in a small bowl. Spoon on top of spaghetti.

Transfer to the oven and bake for 30 minutes until tops are nicely browned. Remove from the oven and set on a wire rack to cool for at least 10 minutes. When cool, remove from the muffin pan by running a knife around the edges and carefully turning out onto a plate. If using ramekins, serve in the individual ramekin dishes. Make an indentation in the top of each with the back of a spoon and add a teaspoon of chili sauce if desired. Serve immediately.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

How does a family of Jewish homesteaders interact with the indigenous people of the Great Plains? Journalist Rebecca Clarren explains how her family immigrated from Russia to South Dakota, lured by the promise of free land and how generations later she writes how it came at the expense of the Lakota. This book might grapple with the past, but it is not hard to find the contemporary relevance.

Essential Reading:

Rebecca Clarren, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020).

Pekka Hämäläinen, Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power (2019).

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (2023).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

There are some years, and some seasons within a given year, that bear witness to immense change. Chris Wimmer, a podcaster and public historian, tells the story of the Summer of 1876, one such year and one such season.

Essential Reading:

Chris Wimmer, The Summer of 1876 (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927 (2013).

T. J. Stiles, Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (2017).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

One of the most consequential wars in global history happened in 1898, and despite the 125th anniversary of that war, there has been little attention paid to this conflict. One exception is the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition 1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions. The museum's curator Taína Caragol and historian Kate Clarke Lemay who created the exhibition join the show to explain why it was so important to showcase the events of that fateful year.

Essential Reading:

Taína Caragol and Kate Clarke Lemay, 1898: Visual Culture and U.S. Imperialism in the Caribbean and the Pacific (2023).

1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revision (exhibition website)

Recommended Reading:

Bonnie Miller, From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898 (2011).

Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood (2000).

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (2001).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian T. J. Stiles joins the show to talk about George Armstrong Custer, and the art of biography writing. As one of the leading authors of the Gilded Age we also take on the question of periodization, uncomfortable history, and unlikeable historical figures.

Essential Reading:

T.J. Stiles, Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (2016).

Recommended Reading:

Robert Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (1974).

Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Better known to Californians as Mortimer, this week's episode takes us to the Wild West and the Pacific coast's most wanted outlaw Charlie Flinn. Matthew Bernstein joins the show to discuss his latest book Hanging Charlie Flinn, a page-turning tale of theft, murder, and jailbreaks.

Essential Reading:

Matthew Bernstein, Hanging Charley Flinn: The Short and Violent Life of the Boldest Criminal in Frontier California (2023).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The architecture of the Gilded Age differed from that which came before and after. Phillip James Dodd joins me to discuss the various ways Beaux Arts design transformed the era, and the people responsible for the architectural renaissance that drew upon Greek and Roman style for the new American republic.

Essential Reading:

Phillip James Dodd, An American Renaissance: Beaux-arts Architecture in New York City (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Wayne Craven, Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society (2009).

Zachery J. Violette, The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (2019).

Susanne Hinman, The Grandest Madison Square Garden: Art, Scandal, and Architecture in Gilded Age New York (2019).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Daniel Coit Gilman is one of the Gilded Age's most important university presidents, and finally we have a book about his influence at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins universities and the Carnegie Institute. His biographer is a university president, too. Michael T. Benson, president of Carolina Coastal University joins the show to talk about Gilman and the start of modern universities in America.

Essential Reading:

Michael T. Benson, Daniel Coit Gilman and the Modern University (2023).

Recommended Reading:

John Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (2019, third edition).

Jonathan Cole, The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected (2012).

Hal Boyd and Michael Benson, "The Public University: Recalling Higher Education’s Democratic Purpose," NEA Journal (2015).

Daniel Coit Gilman’s inaugural speech (1876 at Johns Hopkins).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

As the labor movement pushed for greater recognition, pay, and conditions in the workplace (on land), the sailors of America had a tougher fight. The nature of maritime commerce made sailors foreign in a domestic sense, as the Supreme Court would rule. Geography complicated their place in constitutional law, and made them at once victims and agents of the American empire. Will Riddell joins me to discuss these labor issues and his new book On the Waves of Empire.

Essential Reading:

William D. Riddell, On the Waves of Empire: U.S. Imperialism and Merchant Sailors, 1872-1924 (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Julie Greene, “The Wages of Empire: Capitalism, Expansion, and Working-Class Formation,” in Daniel E. Bender and Jana K. Lipman (eds.), Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism (2015) 35-58.

Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (2018).

Leon Fink, Sweatshops of the Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World’s First Globalized Industry, From 1812 to the Present (2011).

Moon-Ho Jung, Menace to Empire: Anti-Colonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the U.S. National Security State (2022).

Marilyn Lake, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (2019),


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Spring seminar series at the Newport Preservation Society in 2023 focused on the transformation of the United States in the Gilded Age. Listen to CEO of the Society Trudy Coxe and Director of Curation and Programming Leslie Jones talk about the series. Here also are the links to the various lectures:

  • Michael Patrick Cullinane "The Gilded Age: Past and Present"
  • Matthew Bird "The Gilded Years: The First Information Age"
  • Will B. Mackintosh "The Many Playgrounds of the Industrial Age"
  • T.J. Stiles "Age of the Machine: The Fight to Reinvent Democracy in the Gilded Age"
  • Richard Guy Wilson "Creating a New American Image: Architecture, 1870-1910"
  • Nancy Unger "Under the Gold-Plating: Everyday Americans in the Gilded Age"

Visit the Newport Preservation Society


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The lives and friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge spanned the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Few other politicians had such a monumental impact on the time, and Dr. Laurence Jurdem joins the show to explain of their friendship came to define the period.

Essential Reading:

Laurence Jurdem, The Rough Rider and the Professor: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Friendship that Changed American History (2023).

Recommended Reading:

John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (1965).

William Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1961).

Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1918 (1925).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The rise of socialism in the United States parallels the sprawl of industrial capitalism. The intellectual debates about how Marxism would play out in America became ever more complex when the Socialist Labor Party considered the idea race. Dr. Lorenzo Costaguta joins the show to explain how scientific racism - in its various forms - divided socialist activists and eventually contributed to the decline of the Socialist Labor Party of America.

Essential Reading:

Lorenzo Costaguta, Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Daniel E. Bender, American Abyss: Savagery and Civilization in the Age of Industry (2013).

Philip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (1977).

Paul Heideman (ed.), Class Struggle and the Color Line: American Socialism and the Race Question, 1900-1930 (2018).

Sally M. Miller (ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Early Twentieth-century American Socialism (1999).

Mark Pittenger, American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870-1920 (1993).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

How did Japan's rise to world power change the dynamics of geopolitics, and the way imperial powers viewed non-White people? Chris Suh joins the podcast to discuss his debut book on the effects of Japanese imperialism and the transformation of the Pacific world.

Essential Reading:

Chris Suh, The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion (2023).

Recommended Reading:

David C. Atkinson, The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States (2016).

Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (2005).

Thomas Bender, A Nation among Nations: America’s Place in World History (2006).

Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1897– 1911 (1972).

Richard S. Kim, The Quest for Sovereignty: Korean Immigration Nationalism and U.S. Sovereignty, 1905– 1945 (2011).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Where does the Old South end and the New South begin? The transition comes with Scarlet O'Hara and Margaret Mitchell's blockbuster romance Gone with the Wind. Here the ideas of the Lost Cause mythology take root, and the promise and peril of industrial capitalism take shape. Professor Sarah Churchwell joins the podcast to discuss her new book and how we all should be re-reading Mitchell's novel with today's context in mind.

Essential Reading:

Sarah Chruchwell, The Wrath to Come (2023).

Sarah Churchwell, Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream (2018).

View Details

From the anti-Catholicism of the Know Nothings to the present-day Catholic nationalism in American politics, the Church and its leaders have left an indelible mark on society. Dr. William Cossen joins the show to explain how the idea of Catholic nationalism came to be in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

William S. Cossen, Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Maura Jane Farrelly, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity (2012).

Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (1994).

Jon Gjerde, Catholicism and the Shaping of Nineteenth-Century America (2012).

John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (2003).

Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Post-war America to Its Protestant Promise (2011).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The peace movement, global citizenship, and global government are wrapped up in this week's episode. Dr. Megan Threlkeld joins to discuss her book Citizens of the World, which takes on these subjects and the role that nine women played in shaping the idea of global citizenship. Given the rise of internationalism in this period, Dr. Threlkeld's book is vital to how we interpret international relations in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

Megan Threlkeld, Citizens of the World: U.S. Women and Global Government (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Keisha N. Blain and Tiffany M. Gill (eds.), To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (2019).

Daniel Gorman, International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century (2017).

Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (2012).

Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler (eds.), Women’s International Thought: A New History (2021).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Some families are synonymous with the Gilded Age and Progressive Era: the Vanderbilts, the LaFollettes, the Roosevelts, and the Astors to name a few. Dr. David Patterson joins the show to remind us of another dynasty: the Pinchots, a reform-minded, Presbyterian family that held sway in Washington and Pennsylvania from the Civil War to the Kennedy administration.

Essential Reading:

David Patterson, The Pinchots: A Family Saga (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer (1998).

Bibi Gaston: The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter’s Search for Home (2008).

Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (2001).

Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (1947).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Joy Callaway writes novels - novels infused with historical research. Her latest is a Gilded Age romance story set in Westchester Co., New York.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, lynching took place across the country, even if we think of it as a phenomenon exclusive to southern states. Acclaimed historian and author of civil rights Philip Dray tells a different story, of a lynching in New York that rocked the small town of Port Jervis. The murder of Robert Lewis by a mob has great significance for how we remember the past and consider the present day.

Essential Reading:

Philip Dray, A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age (2022).

Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (2003).

Recommended Reading:

Richard Brown, Strains of Violence: Historical Studies of Violence and Vigilantism (1975).

Dan Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (1979).

A.J. Williams-Myers, Long Hammering: Essays on the Forging of an African-American Presence in the Hudson River Valley (1994).

Jacqueline Goldsby, A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature (2006).

Michael J, Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society 1847-1947 (2004).

Amy Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (2009).

Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post Civil War North, 1865-1901 (2001).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Gilded Age had its fare share of political scandals, and the Star Route scandal ranks as one of its most important. It exposed the spoils system at a time when public debate about good government filled the headlines. Why has this scandal remained so obscure when compared to others like Credit Mobilier or the Whiskey Ring. Professor Shawn Peters joins the show to discuss his latest book When Bad Men Combine, the story of the star route scandal.

Essential Reading:

Shawn Francis Peters, When Bad Men Combine: The Star Route Scandal and the Twilight of Gilded Age Politics (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Winifred Gallagher, How the Post Office Created America (2016).

Lewis L. Gould, The Republicans: A History of the Grand Old Party (2014).

Adelbert Bower Sageser, The First Two Decades of the Pendleton Act: A Study of Civil Service Reform (1935).

Thomas C. Reeves, Gentleman Boss: the Life of Chester Alan Arthur (1975).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

In this episode, Dr. Michelle Krowl joins me to talk about the archives, and specifically one the biggest archives in the world, the Library of Congress. Michelle works there as the historical specialist on the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is also a specialist for the presidential papers from James K. Polk to William Howard Taft, and thereby an expert on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Child labor regulation seems emblematic of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and yet federal legislation to protect children only became settled law many decades later. Professor John Fliter joins the show to discuss the history of child labor laws and how it has shaped the contemporary political debates.

Essential Reading:

John A. Fliter, Child Labor in America: The Epic Legal Struggle to Protect Children (2018).

Recommended Reading:

Betsy Wood, Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism (2020).

Hugh D. Hindman, Child Labor: An American History (2002).

Vincent DiGirolamo, Crying the News: A History of America's Newsboys (2019).

Paul Chrystal, Factory Girls: The Working Lives of Women and Children (2022).

James D. Schmit, Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor (2010).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

If any figure of the Gilded Age has major relevance on the lives of the working class today - especially those that cannot or struggle to buy a home - it is Henry George. The best-selling author and single tax advocate offered Americans and the world a big idea that could change the way governments tax its people.

Essential Reading:

Christopher William England, Land and Liberty: Henry George and the Crafting of Modern Liberalism (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879).

Edward T. O'Donnell, Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age (2015).

Phillip J. Bryson, The Economics of Henry George: History's Rehabilitation of America's Greatest Early Economist (2011).

Mary M. Cleveland, "The Economics of Henry George: A Review Essay," The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 71, no. 2 (April 2012): 498-511.

Ramesh Chandra, "Allyn Young on Henry George and the Single Tax," Review of Political Economy 34, no. 4 (December 2022): 766-88.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Historians often look for excluded voices, and that task is difficult because archives keep scarcer records of ordinary people leading seemingly ordinary lives. When a scholar finds records that can tell a new story it is exciting. Professor Joan Flores Villalobos accomplishes this task in the story of The Silver Women. She joins me to talk about migrant women who transformed the Panama Canal project.

Essential Reading:

Joan Flores Villalobos, The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Velma Newton, The Silver Men: West Indian Labour Migration to Panama, 1850-1914 (2004).

Julie Greene, The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (2009).

David McCullough, The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (1977).

Walter Lafeber, Panama Canal The Crisis in Historical Perspective (1978).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

This special episode is a reading by author Aaron Stark from his new book Disrupting Time, an account of the Waltham Watch Company and the international espionage that led to its demise.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first federal legislation to prohibit an entire nation of people from coming to the United States. It instigated a century or more or immigration regulations and codified "illegal" immigration. Dr. Ben Railton joins the show to explore the act. Ten years ago, Ben wrote about how the legislation still reverberates throughout the twentieth century, and in this episode we bring that history to bear on current events.

Essential Reading:

Benjamin Railton, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America (2013).

Recommended Reading:

Hidetaka Hirota, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (2017).

Jane Hong, Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (2019).

Erika Lee, America for Americans and The Making of Asian America (2016).

Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller, Fortunate Sons: The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization (2011).

Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (2021).

Robert Weir, Knights Unhorsed: Internal Conflict in a Gilded Age Social Movement (2000).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Professors Patricia Strach and Kathleen Sullivan are better known in political science circles as "The Garbage Girls." They have been researching the history and politics of trash collection for nearly a decade, which culminates in a most important book called The Politics of Trash. They join me to talk about why your waste matters.

Essential Reading:

Patricia Strach and Kathleen S. Sullivan, The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929 (2022)

Recommended Reading:

Joel A. Tarr, Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (1996).

Martin V. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment (2004).

Stanley K. Schultz and Clay McShane, “To Engineer the Metropolis: Sewers, Sanitation, and City Planning in Late-Nineteenth America,” The Journal of American History 65, no. 2 (September 1978): 389-411

Carl A. Zimring, Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States (2016).

Kimberley S. Johnson, Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age before Brown (2010).

Carol Nackenoff and Julie Novkov, eds., Statebuilding from the Margins: Between Reconstruction and the New Deal (2014).

Jessica Trounstine, Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities (2018).

Lily Baum Pollans, Resisting Garbage: The Politics of Waste Management in American Cities (2021).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Edith Wharton ranks as one of the Gilded Age's most prolific and popular writers. In this episode, Professor Stacy Holden tells us about her research on Wharton's lesser known travelogue In Morocco, a revealing account of the author's travels to the French and Spanish colony. It tells us a great deal about American and European imperialism, and the Orientalism that pervaded her thinking.

Essential Reading:

Edith Wharton, In Morocco (1920).

Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton (2007).

Recommended Reading:

Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Edith Wharton’s Writings from the Great War (2004).

Alan Price, The End of the Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton and the First World War (1996).

Andrew Patrick, America’s Forgotten Middle East Initiative: The King-Crane Commission of 1919 (2015).

Andrew Priest, Designs on Empire (on the podcast in 2022).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Last year, we had Professor Thomas Ruys Smith with us to talk about his book Christmas Past. Keeping in the festive spirit, Tom has returned, and with co-conspirator Professor Hilary Emmett to do a special holiday reading of a Gilded Age classic Five Little Peppers. This was one of the biggest stories of its day and it launched Margaret Sidney's career into the stratosphere of best known authors. In this episode Hilary reads a chapter from the republished story.

Margaret Sidney, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (UEA Publishing Project, 2022).

View Details

The newspapers called Mother Jones the most dangerous woman in America because her presence at a labor rally would stiffen the resolve of workers. As Professor Simon Cordery relates, she raised "Cain and Consciousness." Prof. Cordery joins me to talk about Jones and her influence on the labor movement in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

Simon Cordery, Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness (2010).

Recommended Reading:

Philip S. Foner, ed., Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Speeches and Writings (1983).

Edward M. Steel, ed., The Correspondence of Mother Jones (1985).

Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (2010).

Melvyn Dubofsky and Joseph A. McCartin, Labor in America: A History (2017).

Elliott J. Gorn, Mother Jones (2001).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Professor Chad Pearson joins me to talk about his latest book Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century. The book explores the way in which employer organizations helped stope industrial action and bust union activism. The tactics "employed" will shock you, even if you know a great deal about the period. Pearson also makes a strong case for thinking about these groups in a broader manner than past scholars have, including the KKK in the typically class-centric story.

Essential Reading:

Chad Pearson, Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Vilja Hulden, The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal (2023).

Aaron Goings, The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest (2020).

James Gray Pope, "Snubbed Landmark: Why United States v. Cruikshank (1876) Belongs at the Heart of the American Constitutional Canon," Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review 49 (2014): 385-447.

Brian D. Palmer, "The New New Poor Law: A Chapter in the Current Class War Waged from Above," Labour / Le Travail 84 (Fall 2019), 53–105.

Steven Hahn, "Emancipation, Incarceration, and the Boundaries of Coercion," Journal of Southern History 88, no. 1 (February 2022): 5-38.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Everything is bigger in Texas, including political movements. I have yet to speak with scholars of populism, and this show rectifies that with two outstanding authors of the latest Texas populism histories (professors Gregg Cantrell and Thomas Alter) and a guest host, my colleague at Dickinson State University Dr. Jeff Wells.

Essential Reading:

Gregg Cantrell, The People’s Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism (2020)

Thomas Alter II, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Donna Barnes, Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People’s Party in Texas (1984).

Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (1976).

Matthew Hild, Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists, Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South (2007).

Roscoe Martin, The People’s Party in Texas: A Case Study in Third-Party Politics (1933).

Robert C. McMath, Jr., Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance (1975).

Charles Postel, The Populist Revolt (2007).

Marion K. Barthelme, (ed.), Women in the Texas Populist Movement: Letters to the Southern Mercury (1997).

Theresa Case, The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor (2010).

Tim Lehman, Up the Trail: How Texas Cowboys Herded Longhorns and Became an American Icon (2018).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

I've been looking forward to talking about food for a while. Dr. Helen Zoe Veit joins me to answer all my questions about decadent recipes, food security, poverty, picky children, and the connections between Gilded Age foodstuff and our diet today. Dr. Veit is professor at Michigan State University and the director of the "What America Ate" project.

Essential Reading:

Helen Zoe Veit, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (2013).

Recommended Reading:

Benjamin R. Cohen, Pure Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Manufactured Food (2020)

April Merleaux, Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness (2015)

Jonathan Rees, The Chemistry of Fear: Harvey Wiley's Fight for Pure Food (2021)

Megan Elias, Stir It Up: Home Economics in American Culture (2008)

Andrew Haley, Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920 (2011)

Laura Shaprio, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (1986)

Rebecca Sharpless, Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South,1865-1960 (2010)

Special food issue of The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, ed. Megan Elias, Volume 18, Issue 4 (October 2019)


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Someone poisoned Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University. Who done it, is up for debate. This murder story includes a cover up and a winding tale of Gilded Age policing, patronage, gender norms, immigration, and higher education. Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard White joins me to explain how he researched the case and what, if any, conclusions can be made about the chief suspects.

Essential Reading:

Richard White, Who Killed Jane Stanford: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University (2022).

View Details

Foreign banks saw great opportunity in China. Financing trade and commercial activities such as railroad construction was lucrative. Like all investments there is risk and foreign banks faced substantial risks in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Wars and revolutions threatened growth, and banking in many ways sparked wars and revolutions. Ghassan Moazzin's book Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919 explores these turbulent years of foreign investment.

Essential Reading:

Ghassan Moazzin, Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China: Banking on the Chinese Frontier, 1870–1919 (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Michael Schiltz, Accounting for the Fall of Silver: Hedging Currency Risk in Long-Distance Trade with Asia, 1870–1913 (2020).

Austin Dean, China and the End of Global Silver, 1873–1937 (2020).

Geoffrey Jones, British Multinational Banking 1830–1990 (1993).

Shizuya Nishimura, Ranald Michie and Suzuki Toshio (eds.), The Origins of International Banking in Asia: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2012).

Linsun Cheng, Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Professional Managers and the Development of Chinese Banks, 1897–1937 (2003).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Grover Cleveland has an interesting place in American political history. He won more presidential election popular votes than anyone other than FDR, and he is the only president to serve non-consecutive terms. Is there any more to say about him? Troy Senik, a former speech writer, makes a strong case to remember Cleveland today.

Essential Reading:

Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland (2022).


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast is 1 year old. I use this opportunity to reflect on the year, the top downloaded shows, the new friends made, and some behind-the-scenes insights. I also want to thank everyone who has joined me on this journey - the guests, the listeners, and the publishers. Many, many thanks!


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Of all the tycoons of the Gilded Age, Jay Gould stands out as a speculator and industrialist that would do anything to make money. Greg Steinmetz, a journalist and Wall Street analyst joins me to discuss the life of this legendary "rascal." Regardless of how you might interpret Gould's place in American history, he cannot be ignored.

Essential Reading:

Greg Steinmetz, American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune (2022).

Recommended Reading:

T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2009).

Edward J. Renehan Jr., Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould (2006).

H. W. Brands, The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield: A Tragedy of the Gilded Age (2011).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Do you know Vivekananda? He was the leading Hindu spiritualist of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and a major influence on modern mindfulness, meditation, and yoga. You should know him, and thanks to Professor Ruth Harris we have a new biography that provides an intersectional approach to his life.

Essential Reading:

Ruth Harris, Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda (2022).

View Details

Religion and war has a paradoxical relationship. Dr. Benjamin Wetzel joins me to discuss the history of religion and war in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, from mainline Protestant ministers calling souls to join the Union Army, to Catholic priests resisting the war against Spain in 1898.

Essential Reading:

Benjamin Wetzel, American Crusade: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (2012).

Matthew McCullough, The Cross of War: Christian Nationalism and U.S. Expansion in the Spanish-American War (2014).

Richard Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (2003).

Kristin Schwain, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (2008).

Jonathan Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (2010).

George Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (2015).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Why have we not heard about Miriam Leslie? She was one of the richest New York women, and a media tycoon. She was also a seductress who broke the era's gender norms and charlatan that concocted her origin story. Her life is riveting and no better author to bring this biography to life than Betsy Prioleau.

Essential Reading:

Betsy Prioleau, Diamonds and Deadlines: The Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age (2022).

View Details

No one can dispute the importance of the Great War, but where the conflict began, and the ideas that set it apart from other wars is the starting point of this episode. Patrick Cohrs discusses his latest tome The New Atlantic Order and explains how the long origin of World War I began in the 1860s and has reverberated to this very day.

Essential Reading:

Patrick O. Cohrs, The New Atlantic Order (2022).

View Details

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era published a roundtable called "What Came Next?: Reflections on the Aftermath(s) of the 1918-19 Flu Pandemic in the Age of COVID." Three of the participants join me to discuss how pandemics end, if they end, what lessons they teach (if any), and how they contribute to the history of a given era. The answers might surprise you!

Essential Reading:

Christopher McKnight Nichols, E. Thomas Ewing, K. Healan Gaston, Maddalena Marinari, Alan Lessoff, and David Huyssen, "What Came Next?: Reflections on the Aftermath(s) of the 1918-19 Flu Pandemic in the Age of COVID," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 21, no. 2 (April 2022): 111-149.

Roundtable with Christopher McKnight Nichols, Nancy Bristow, E. Thomas Ewing, Joseph M. Gabriel, Benjamin C. Montoya and Elizabeth Outka “Reconsidering the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic in the Age of COVID-19” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19, no. 4: 642-672.


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is one of the most important African American Churches in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and Christina Dickerson-Cousin shares how the AME worked in Indian Territory. The story is one of shared issues and common interests that helps add nuance to our understanding of the period.

Essential Reading:

Christina Dickerson-Cousin, Black Indians & Freedmen: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indigenous Americans, 1816-1916 (2021).

View Details

The United States and Brazil share the distinction of being the last places in the Americas to emancipate slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and Fourteenth Amendment (1865) accomplished this in the U.S. and the Golden Law in Brazil did the same in 1888, although emancipation occurred gradually there over three decades. Roberto Saba calls the experience "the American Mirror" and argues that it can tell us a great deal about the hemisphere, the industrialization of American economies, and the growth of a new order.

Essential Reading:

Roberto Saba, American Mirror: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Emancipation (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (2000).

Sven Beckert, The Empire of Cotton: A Global History (2015).

Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (2016).

Angela Alonso, The Last Abolition: The Brazilian Antislavery Movement, 1868-1888 (2021).

Greg Downs, The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle Over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic (2019).

Teresa Cribelli, Industrial Forests and Mechanical Marvels: Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (2016).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Megan Kate Nelson takes us on a journey to Yellowstone, the first national park and a site of iconic western beauty. From the scientific surveys that explored the park's geysers, to the railroad expansion through Native American territory, Dr. Nelson's book paints a vivid portrait of the place. Join us for a conversation about the American environment, economic panics, landscape photography, and how to write narrative history.

Essential Reading:

Megan Kate Nelson, Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Ferdinand V. Hayden, “The Wonders of the West II. More about the Yellowstone,” Scribner’s Monthly (February 1872): 388-396.

Thomas Moran, The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1872).

Ernie LaPointe, Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy (2009).

M. John Lubetkin, Jay Cooke’s Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, The Sioux, and the Panic of 1873 (2006).

Heather Cox Richardson, West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (2007).

Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (2000).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

When you think of the artists of the Gilded Age, you might recall John Singer Sargent or James Abbott McNeill Whistler. But have you heard of Amalia Küssner? She painted royalty and robber barons, and became one of the era's most sought after artists. This week is an extra special treat as Kathleen Langone takes over the show. Kathleen is host of the People Hidden In Historypodcast, and Amalia Küssner features as one of those people she hopes to remind the world about. You can listen to an extended version of this episode on Kathleen's show.

Kathleen has published several article, including with Boston Magazine and has appeared on television and radio related to her work on historic events in New England. Check out her podcast and should you wish to get in touch, her Twitter handle is: @phihpod.

View Details

Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jane Addams take center state in Neil Lanctot's latest book The Approaching Storm, an intimate look at America's decision to enter World War I. Lanctot's character-driven narrative takes the reader on transatlantic peace missions and a deep introspective about American values.

Essential Reading:

Neil Lanctot, The Approaching Storm: Roosevelt, Wilson, Addams and Their Clash over America's Future (2021).

Neil Lanctot, "Biden, like Woodrow Wilson in WWI, treads a fine line in refusing to send troops to Ukraine," Chicago Tribune, 14 March 2022.

Recommended Reading:

John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest (1983).

Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (2002).

Louise W. Knight, Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (2005).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Disaster relief became an instrument of U.S. foreign policy in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The "progressive presidents" particularly utilized aid for American interests, sparking a trend. Prof. Julia Irwin joins me to discuss her upcoming book on this very topic.

Essential Reading:

Julia Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation's Humanitarian Awakening (2013).

Julia Irwin, "Our Climatic Moment: Hazarding a History of the United States and the World," Diplomatic History 45, no. 3 (June 2021): 421-44.

Recommended Reading:

Cynthia Kierner, Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood (2019).

Ted Steinberg, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (2000).

Olivier Zunz, Philanthropy in America: A History (2012).

Heather Curtis, Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid (2018).

William N. Tilchin, “Theodore Roosevelt, Anglo-American Relations, and the Jamaica Incident of 1907,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 3 (1995): 385-405

Salvatore LaGumina, The Great Earthquake: America Comes to Messina’s Rescue (2008).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

I spoke with Prof. Nelson the very day Russia invaded Ukraine and we talk about the history of the black paths that fed the world with bushels of grain, but also became the most fought over space in Eastern Europe. Scott's new book Oceans of Grain (Basic Books) is out this week and it couldn't have come at a better time to help us understand our world today.

Essential Reading:

Scott Reynolds Nelson, Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Neal Ascherson, The Black Sea (1996).

Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (2017).

Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1989).

Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and their Lasting Impact (2004).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

European imperialism had an influence on American policy makers, changing the way they thought about overseas colonization and building a new world order. Prof. Andrew Priest joins the show to discuss his latest book Designs on Empire: America's Rise to Power in the Age of European Imperialism.

Essential Reading:

Andrew Priest, Designs on Empire: America's Rise to Power in the Age of European Imperialism (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Mary Ann Heiss, “The Evolution of the Imperial Idea and U.S. National Identity,” Diplomatic History 26 (October 2002): 511-540.

A.G. Hopkins, American Empire: A Global History (2018)

Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (2nd ed. 2009).

Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898 (Thirty-Fifth Anniversary edition, 1998)

Frank Ninkovich, Global Dawn: The Cultural Foundation of American Internationalism, 1865-1890 (2009).

Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (2012).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Professor Clive Webb tells the story of Lord Gordon Gordon, a impostor and fraud that stole millions from railroad tycoon Jay Gould. The theft also sparked a diplomatic row between the United States and Canada that nearly led to war.

This story first appeared in Canada's History and the publishers have kindly allowed us to reproduce the story with Clive as the narrator. Please visit their website: https://www.canadahistory.ca/ or you can find the original article here: https://canadas-history.myshopify.com/collections/canadas-history-back-issues/products/december-2021-january-2022

Many thanks to Fesliyan Studios for the free background music. You can find royalty-free tracks at their website: https://www.fesliyanstudios.com or their YouTube pages: https://www.youtube.com/user/fesliyanstudios


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

This week we hear from early career scholars about cutting-edge research and research. Aroop Mukharji will talk with me about the War of 1898 and presidential decision-making; Chelsea Gibson will share teaching innovations and her work on Russian-American activism; and Alex Bryne discusses the birth of aviation and its effect on Pan-Americanism. Please take some time to read their publications!

Essential Reading:

Aroop Mukharji, "What One Word Teaches Us about the Uncertainty of American Empire," War on the Rocks (February 12, 2021).

Chelsea C. Gibson, "The John Browns of St. Petersburg: Former Abolitionists and Russian Terrorism in the Late 19th Century," OAH Presentation (2020).

Alex Bryne, "The Potential of Flight: U.S. Aviation and Pan-Americanism During the Early Twentieth Century," 19, no. 1 (January 2020): 48-76.


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Prospector, tycoon, westerner, politician, father, and husband, George Hearst was a man of his time and as Matthew Bernstein relates, an part of the Gilded Age. In his biography, Bernstein traces Hearst's life from his Missouri childhood to the booms and busts of his mining career. As the father of William Randolph Hearst, George left quite a legacy.

Essential Reading:

Matthew Bernstein, George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age (2021).

Recommended Reading:

David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000).

W. A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst: A Biography of William Randolph Hearst (1963).

Judith Robinson, The Hearsts: An American Dynasty (1991).

Alexandra Nickless, Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics (2018).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Over the last five years, many confederate statues have come down. Professor Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders joins the show to explain why they went up in the first place. Commemoration of the confederacy offers a great insight into the politics of race in the American South and the enduring myth of the Lost Cause. So many statues go up in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era that we could (with tongues-in-cheek) consider re-naming the period the Age of Confederate Memorials. Why? Who advocated for their erection? And what do these statues say about the past and today?

Essential Reading:

Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, "Removing Lost Cause Monuments is the First Step in Dismantling White Supremacy," Washington Post, 19 June 2020.

Recommended Reading:

Karen L. Cox, Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (2019).

David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001).

Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2016).

Adam H. Donby, The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory (2020).

Thavolia Glymph, "Liberty Dearly Bought: The Making of Civil War Memory in Afro-American Communities in the South" in Payne and Green (eds.), Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950 (2003).

Gary Young, "Why Every Single Statue Should Come Down," Guardian, 1 June 2021.


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

It had to happen: an episode about Theodore Roosevelt. I'm surprised it took ten episodes to get here! Prof. Benjamin Wetzel and I double as interviewer and interviewee in a conversation about our recent books about Roosevelt. Ben's explores TR's religiousity, a new vein of research that has been overlooked. My book shares new sources for the first time. Both depict TR in unique treatments.

Essential Reading:

Benjamin Wetzel, Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit (2021).

Michael Patrick Cullinane, Remembering Theodore Roosevelt (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Christian F. Reisner, Roosevelt's Religion (1922).

Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (2004).

Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (2008).

Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill (1954).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

How did Americans celebrate Christmas in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era? This episode has a festive feel as I ask Thomas Ruys Smith about his new book Christmas Past: An Anthology of Seasonal Stories from Nineteenth Century America. We'll talk about household names such as Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, as well as stories you may have never heard from slaves, immigrants, Native Americans, and non-Christians.

Essential Reading:

Thomas Ruys Smith, Christmas Past: An Anthology of Seasonal Stories from Nineteenth Century America (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Penn Restad, Christmas in America: A History (1995).

Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Our Most Cherished Holiday (1997).

Karal Ann Marling, Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday (2000).

Tara Moore, Victorian Christmas in Print (2009).

Robert May, Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory (2019).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

What is a Rotary Club? Who is a Rotarian? The answer might surprise you. This club has over 35,000 offices around the world, in almost every country. It began in 1905 in Chicago, and its history tells the story of American capitalism, racism, gender bias, and class identity. Independent scholar Brendan Goff talks with me about his new book Rotary International and the Selling of American Capitalism, an extensively researched book and a deep dive on the organization.

Essential Reading:

Brendan Goff, Rotary International and the Selling of American Capitalism (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Maureen A. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (2002).

Paul A. Kramer, “Embedding Capital: Political-Economic History, the United States and the World,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15 (July 2016): 331-362.

Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (1998).

Khalil Muhammed, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (2010).

Peter James Hudson, Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean (2017).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Philippine Revolution is a seminal moment in global history that we too often view through the lens of American expansion and racial ideologies. Dr. Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, author of Asian Place, Filipino Nation, offers a new way to think about the revolution in the context of Japanese ascendancy and Asian ideas of race. In doing so, we see how the Philippine Revolution became central to South East Asian anti-colonial movements. More than any other episode, this one pushes listeners to re-center our perspective on the Global South in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, Asian Place, Filipino Nation (2020).

Additional Reading:

Reynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 (1997).

Rebecca Karl, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (2002).

Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (2007).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

After the Civil War, citizenship increased, and yet voter turnout decreased. Why? Jon Grinspan joins the show to discuss his latest book The Age of Acrimony: How American Fought to Fix Their Democracy. As a curator at the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian), Jon is uniquely placed to discuss the historical parallels to American politics today.

Essential Reading:

Jon Grinspan, The Age of Acrimony: How American Fought to Fix Their Democracy (2021).

Additional Reading:

Richard Franklin Bensel, The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (2004).

Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (1997).

Joanne Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War (2018).

Mark Lawrence Kornbluh, Why American Stopped Voting: The Decline of Participatory Democracy and the Emergence of Modern American Politics (2000).

Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics, The American North 1865-1928 (1986).

Mark Wahlgren Summers, Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics (2004).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

No industry is more central to the Gilded Age than the railroads. It transformed commerce. It shaped the contours of cities and maps. It created leisure and luxury in ways not known before. Best-selling author John Sedgwick talks about his latest book, From the River to the Sea, a tale of warring railroad tycoons.

Essential Reading:

John Sedgwick, From the River to the Sea (2021).

Additional Reading:

Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (2000).

Michael Hiltzik, Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America (2020).

Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2012).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Additional Reading:

Daniel T. Rogers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (1998).

Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age: 1865-1905 (2005).

Maureen Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s-1920s (2006).

Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (2010).

Glenda Gilmore, Who Were the Progressives? (2002).

Jacqueline Jones, Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (2017).

Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (1984).

Nancy Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer (2000).

Nancy Unger, Belle La Follette: Progressive Era Reformer (2015).

Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (1963).

Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (2007).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

It had to be done: we need to talk about the title and periodization. What is the Gilded Age? What is the Progressive Era? When is it? With Christopher McKnight Nichols and Nancy Unger we set out to define the period we study.

Essential Reading:

Christopher McKnight Nichols and Nancy Unger (eds.), A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2017).

Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873).

Additional Reading:

Richard Schnirov, "Thoughts on Periodizing the Gilded Age: Capital Accumulation, Society, and Politics, 1873-1898," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5, no. 3 (2006): 189-224.

Rebecca Edwards, Richard R. John, Richard Bensel, "Forum: Should We Abolish the Gilded Age," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 8, 4 (2009): 461-85.


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Additional Reading:

David Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (2018).

Michael Gomez, Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (2005)

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1993).

David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race (1994).

Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom and Blacks on John Brown (1974).

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism (1983).

Lewis Gordon, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (2020).

Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (2004).

Host Suggestion:

Randall Westbrook, Education and Empowerment: The Essential Writings of W.E.B. DuBois (2013).

Almost all of W.E.B. Du Bois's writings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are in the public domain. Internet Archive offers access to these texts for free.


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

W. E. B. Du Bois made an indelible contribution to American thought and culture, an is an essential figure to those that study the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. With Professor Reiland Rabaka, this show explores the writings, influence, and internationalism of Du Bois.

Essential Reading:

Reiland Rabaka, Du Bois: A Critical Introduction (2021).

Additional Reading:

Reiland Rabaka, W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory (2008).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Additional Reading:

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies (1999).

Jennifer Karnes Alexander, The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (2008).

Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (1985).

Host Suggestion:

JoAnn Yates and Craig Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (2019).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

The Progressive Era shaped the way we think about women's reproductive rights, and Prof. Barbara Schneider's book Corporal Rhetoric investigates all the ways. It tells how motherhood went from a natural experience to a pathogenic one, how the eugenics movement gathered steam, and how the medical profession changed.

Essential Reading:

Barbara Schneider, Corporal Rhetoric: Regulating Reproduction in the Progressive Era (2021).

Additional Reading:

Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty (1998).


Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Additional Reading (cocktails):

  • David Wondrich, Imbibe: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar (2015).
  • Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails (2007).
  • Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2011).
  • Adam Elmegirab, Book of Bitters (2017).
  • Iain Gately, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol (2009).
  • William Grimes, Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail (2002).
  • Brad Thomas Parsons, Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All (2011).
  • Charles Schumann, The American Bar: The Artistry of Mixing Drinks (2018).

Additional Reading (Gilded Age & Progressive Era history):

  • Cecelia Tichi, Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (2011).
  • Sean Cashman, America in the Gilded Age (1993).
  • Lila and Arthur Weinberg, The Muckrakers (2002).

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

In this episode I talk cocktails with Cecelia Tichi the author of so many wonderful books, but most recently Gilded Age Cocktails. Tichi shares stories of the bars, mixologists, and imbibers that gloried in the Golden Age of drinking, not long before Prohibition.

Essential Reading:

Cecelia Tichi, Golden Age Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Golden Age (2021).

Recommended Reading:

  • David Wondrich, Imbibe: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar (2015).
  • Philip Greene, To Have and Have Another Revised Edition: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion (2015).
  • Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails (2007).

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Additional Reading:

  • The 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic in the Age of COVID-19: Supporting Materials for Teachers (Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era).
  • Alfred Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (2nd ed., 2003).
  • Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (2010).
  • Roundtable with Christopher McKnight Nichols, Nancy Bristow, E. Thomas Ewing, Joseph M. Gabriel, Benjamin C. Montoya and Elizabeth Outka “Reconsidering the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic in the Age of COVID-19” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19, no. 4: 642-672.
  • Elizabeth Outka, Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature (2019).
  • Kenneth Davis, More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War (2018).

Host Suggestion:

  • Sarah Churchwell, Behold America: The Entangled History of America First and the American Dream (2019).

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Just over 100 years ago, the world faced a deadly pandemic not dissimilar to COVID-19. The "great flu" of 1918-1919 was largely forgotten until we needed to historic lessons on how to combat the waves of infection. With Christopher McKnight Nichols, this week's show investigates the pathogenic parallels.

Essential Reading:

  • Christopher McKnight Nichols and Brandon Jett, “Americans used to sacrifice for the public good. What happened?” Washington Post, December 7, 2020
  • Nancy Bristow, American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (2017).

Recommended Reading:

  • John Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (2005).
  • Laura Spinney, Pale Riders: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World (2018).

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

View Details

Welcome to The Gilded Age and Progressive Era! In the pilot episode, I introduce myself, describe the show, and outline the first three episodes. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a podcast for those of us interested in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Each episode features research from leading scholars.

Join us! And subscribe!