The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

This episode marks the show's anniversary and after nearly five years of production, host Michael Patrick Cullinane explains where the show might go from here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the Gilded Age, the coinage of gold and silver had real implications for the economy. Mike Moran joins the show to discuss his latest book When Coins Were King and how the bonanza in mines had a reaction in the Treasury. Essential Reading:Michael Moran, When Coins Were King (2025). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever hated a bird? Pigeons might come to mind, but America's most hated bird is the European Starling and they got their start on the continent in the 1880s. The environmental history of the Starling is a story about hubris and the unintended consequences of human meddling with non-native species. Author Mike Stark joins me to discuss his latest book on the topic. Essential Reading: Mike Stark: Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird (2025).Recommended Reading:Joel Greenberg, A Feathered River across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction (2014).Andrea L. Smalley and Henry M. Reeves, The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation, and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism, 1850–1920 (2022). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Construction history is entirely unfamiliar to most scholars, and yet it is a crucial part of urban history. Alexander Wood joins the show to discuss how New York City was built from blueprints to scaffolding to demolition.Essential Reading:Alexander Wood, Building the Metropolis: Architecture, Construction, and Labor in New York City, 1880–1935 (2025).Recommended Reading:Joanne Abel Goldman, Building New York's Sewers: Developing Mechanisms of Urban Management (1997).Gerard Koeppel, City on a Grid: How New York Became New York (2015).Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (2017). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Context is crucial and perspective is everything. Dr. Tommy Jamison's debut book about the growth of naval power in the Pacific is a wonderful addition to our understanding of Gilded Age security. We discuss the impact of Chile, Peru, China, and Japan on geopolitics and the US Navy. Essential Reading:Thomas Jamison, The Pacific's New Navies: An Ocean, its Wars, and the Making of US Sea Power (2024).Recommended Reading:William D. Riddell, On the Waves of Empire: U.S. Imperialism and Merchant Sailors, 1872-1924 (2023).Marilyn Lake, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (2019),Rolf Hobson, Imperialism at Sea: Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power, and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914 (2002).Elting Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (1968). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Three expert scholars join the show to discuss the state of the field. My thanks to Dr. Cahill, Dr. Cothran, and Dr. Sweet. They have compiled important texts in the hope this bibliography can help aspiring minds to delver deeper. The full list is extensive and cannot be included in its entirety in the show notes, so please find a link to the complete list here.Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America.Bsumek, Indian-Made.Cahill, Federal Fathers & Mothers.Cothran, Remembering the Modoc War.Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places.Doerfler, Those Who Belong.Farr, Blackfoot Redemption.Gage, We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us.Harmon, Rich Indians.Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn.Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood.LaPier, Invisible Reality.Meyer, The White Earth Tragedy.Ostler, Surviving Genocide.Raibmon, Authentic Indians.Roberts, I've Been Here all the While.Silva, Aloha Betrayed.Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.Sturm, Blood Politics.Theobald, Reproduction on the Reservation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who are the people who unearthed Egyptian antiquities and brought them to Western museums? Besides the countless male archaeologists we've heard about, several important women dug in the sands and their stories are an intersectional revelation. Kathleen Sheppard joins the show to talk about her book Women in the Valley of Kings. Essential Reading:Kathleen Sheppard, Women in the Valley of Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (2024). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Spanish-American War has a central place in the history of American empire; it also launched the careers of Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, and Richard Harding Davis. It propelled the Lost Cause mythology and set American ambitions for the century to come. Matthew Bernstein joins the show to discuss his latest book on the subject, Team of Giants.Essential Reading: Matthew Bernstein, Team of Giants: The Making of the Spanish American War (2024).Recommended Reading:Evan Thomas, The War Lovers (2010).John Offner, An Unwanted War (1992).Warren Zimmerman, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made their Country a World Power (2002). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the holidays upon us, let's take a closer look at the Gilded Age traditions that define Christmas and other end-of-year celebrations. Joining me is Ken Turino and Max van Belgooy the co-authors of Interpreting Christmas and one of the book's contributors, Lenora Henson. Interpreting Christmas at Museums and Historic Sites takes a look at how the nation's cultural centers celebrate the holidays. Essential Reading:Ken Turino and Max van Belgooy (eds.), Interpreting Christmas at Museums and Historic Sites (2024). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Great War transformed the world order, and it also revolutionized societies and individual experiences. In one of the year's most interesting books about the war's impact, Dr. Evan Sullivan explores the lives of blinded veterans and how their injuries completely changed the way we think about disability. Evan joins the show to discuss his book and the wider implications of disability studies for historical scholarship.Essential Reading:Evan Sullivan, Constructing Disability after the Great War: Blind Veterans in the Progressive Era (2024).Recommended Reading:Beth Linker, War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (2011).Audra Jennings, Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America (2016).Catherine J. Kudlick, "Disability History: Why We Need Another 'Other'," American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (June 2003). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the industrial revolution came a revolution in the education of Americans. In this episode, Connie Goddard discusses her latest book on the industrial education system that taught Americans how to do trades, skilled labor activities, and generally find work in factories and industrial jobs.Essential Reading:Connie Goddard, Learning for Work: How Industrial Education Fostered Democratic Opportunity (2024).Recommended Reading:Kelly Ann Kolondy, Normalites: The First Professionally Prepared Teachers in the United States (2014).Christopher J. Lucas, Teacher Education in America: Reform Agendas for the Twenty-First Century (1997).Helen Proctor and Kellie Burns, The Curriculum of the Body and the School as Clinic: Histories of Public Health and Schooling (2023). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Presidential elections often serve as periodic demarcations from one historical epoch to another. 1876 has often been seen as the beginning of the Gilded Age. This roundtable episode brings together leading scholars of American law and politics to discuss the virtues and vices of this approach with the aim of determining if we can make sense of American political history from the Gilded Age to the present. Essential Reading: Richard Slotkin, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America (2024).Cynthia Nicoletti, Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis (2017).Recommended Reading: Heather Cox Richardson, "Reconstruction and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era" in A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2017). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do philanthropist Jane Stanford, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln have in common? They all conducted séances. Spiritualism was popular in the Gilded Age, and Lily Dale, NY is the epicenter of the movement. From the voices that gave you Dig: A History Podcast comes Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale. One of the authors - Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik - joins the show to discuss their new book.Essential Reading:Averill Earls, Sarah Handley-Cousins, Marissa Rhodes, and Elizabeth Garner Masarik, Spiritualism's Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale (2024).Recommended Reading:Robert S. Cox, Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism (2003).Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (2008).Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (1997).Cathy Gutierrez, Plato's Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance (2009). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I often say how similar the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is like our contemporary times. With this show, I take it back. Cassie Chadwick was able to swindle the banks in a way that would be impossible today. Listen to Annie Reed discuss her debut book, Imposter Heiress.Essential Reading:Annie Reed, Imposter Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, the Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age (2024).Further Reading:David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (2007).Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game (2017).Amy Reading, The Mark Inside (2012).Hilary Spurling, La Grande Therese: The Greatest Scandal of the Century (2000).Tori Telfer. Confident Women (2021). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The heyday of the boomtowns of Northern Louisiana is long since passed, but their mark on the geography and environment still lingers. Henry Wiencek joins us to discuss his new book, Oil Cities, and the people who built, occupied, and abandoned these towns.Essential Reading:Henry Wiencek, Oil Cities: The Making of North Louisiana's Boomtowns, 1901-1930 (2024).Recommended Reading:Brian Black, Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom (2000).Terence Daintith, Finders Keepers? How the Law of Capture Shaped the World Oil Industry (2010).Daneil Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (2009).Perry W. Howard, Political Tendencies in Louisiana (1971) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the Gilded Age led to the rise of robber barons and railroad tycoons, it also led to the proliferation of another type of character, the con artist. Frank Garmon Jr. joins us to discuss the life Charles Cowlam, a confidence man and charlatan who spent decades making his money by swindling everyone from prime ministers and presidents to working men and wealthy women.Essential Reading:Frank Garmon, Jr., A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam's Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age (2024).Recommended Reading:Timothy J. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York (2006).Brian P Luskey, Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America (2020).Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (1982).Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (1987). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early March 1906, the United States Army and the Filipino Constabulary attacked a insurgent outpost of Moros on the island of Jolo. Over 1,000 men, women, and children were killed in the battle, and less than two dozen Americans lost their lives. It was deemed an atrocity by all observers, even the soldiers that took part. Professor Kim Wagner recalls this violent episode in his latest book.Essential Reading:Kim Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History (2024).Recommended Reading:Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines (2006).Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (1982).Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (2000). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During the nineteenth century, the Zouave was everywhere. The uniform characterized by an open, collarless jacket, baggy trousers, and a fez, originated in French Algeria, but became common amongst military men in France, the United States, and the Papal States, taking on a life of its own. Historians Carol E. Harrison and Thomas J. Brown join us to explain the often-misunderstood outfit and its connection to colonialism, race, gender, fashion, and military tactics, and dress.Essential Reading:Carol E. Harrison and Thomas J. Brown, Zouave Theaters: Transnational Military Fashion and Performance (2024).Recommended Reading:Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (2006).John Bierman, Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire (1988).Lorien Foote, The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Violence, Honor, and Manhood in the Union Army (2010).Charles A. Coulombe, The Pope's Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican (2008). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best-selling video games of all time, but what is the history behind the game? Dr. Tore C. Olsson joins us to talk about the game itself, how video games are teaching American history, and what historians can learn from engaging with popular culture.Essential Reading:Tore Olsson, Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past (2024).Recommended Reading:Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987).Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek (2013).Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011).William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991).S. Paul O'Hara, Inventing the Pinkertons, or Spires, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs: Being Story of the Nation's Most Famous (and Infamous) Detective Agency (2016).William Link, Southern Crucible: The Making of an American Region (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is anarchy? In the Gilded Age, the United States felt the convulsions of several radical ideologies, but none as violent and complex as the anarchist movement. Dr. Michael Willrich joins the show to discuss the key personalities and episodes that gave rise to a new approach to criminal justice and immigration law.Essential Reading:Michael Willrich, American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (2023).Recommended Reading:Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror (2009).Richard Bach Jensen, The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878-1934 (2014).James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009).David M. Rabban, Free Speech in its Forgotten Years (1997).Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (2015). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Gilded Age West was a place to disappear for some. For Ray Hamilton and Jake Sargent - men from distinguished eastern families that sought privacy after scandals turned their lives apart - the West could not shield them from ongoing intrigue. Dr. Maura Jane Farrelly joins the show to talk about her latest book Compliments of Hamilton and Sargent, which detail these men's lives and those around them in Jackson, Wyoming. Essential Reading: Maura Jane Farrelly, Compliments of Hamilton and Sargent (2024).Recommended Reading: Wendy Gonaver, The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880 (2019).Aaron Freundschuh, The Courtesan and the Gigolo: The Murders in the Rue Montaigne and the Dark Side of Empire in Nineteenth Century Paris (2017).Julie Miller, Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City (2008).Stephen O'Connor, Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children he Saved and Failed (2001). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the most controversial and innovative motion pictures in American history is D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation about the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Lost Cause mythology. Michael Connally joins Dr. Robert Bland, Dr. Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, and Dr. Paul McEwan to discuss the way this film shaped, and continues to shape our conversations about race and politics.Essential Watching:D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation (1915).Recommended Reading:Allyson Hobbs, "A Hundred Years Later "Birth of a Nation" Hasn't Gone Away," New Yorker, December 13, 2015. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.