We seem to be living in a reenactment of the Gilded Age: tariffs, territorial expansion, oligarchic control of politics, assassination attempts, a democracy that is straining at the seams. Overlooked and misunderstood, it’s an important period to reconsider. What did it take to leave that tumultuous, surprisingly violent period behind—and what were the costs of the reforms adopted to end it?

The person to ask about this is Jon Grinspan, the political curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Jon is the author of three books, mostly recently Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War (2024), as well as The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 (2019), which we mostly focus on in this conversation.

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Music: "The Union," by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, played by Akiko Sasaki; segue music by Zachary Solomon

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