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

Christmas Past

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

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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.

The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Preserved: A Cultural History of the Funeral Home

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.

Mining the Irish West

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.

Chasing Beauty

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.

Christmas Past

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