The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

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).

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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).

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