The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

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)

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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).

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