Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 324.27327
EAN: 9780195183658
ISBN: 0195183657
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 424
Publication Date: July 07, 2005
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 12334
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
With America's current and ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor and the constant threat of the disappearance of the middle class, the Progressive Era stands out as a time when the middle class had enough influence on the country to start its own revolution. Before the Progressive Era most Americans lived on farms, working from before sunrise to after sundown every day except Sunday with tools that had changed very little for centuries. Just three decades later, America was utterly transformed into a diverse, urban, affluent, leisure-obsessed, teeming multitude. This explosive change was accompanied by extraordinary public-spiritedness as reformers--frightened by class conflict and the breakdown of gender relations--abandoned their traditional faith in individualism and embarked on a crusade to remake other Americans in their own image. The progressives redefined the role of women, rewrote the rules of politics, banned the sale of alcohol, revolutionized marriage, and eventually whipped the nation into a frenzy for joining World War I. These colorful, ambitious battles changed the face of American culture and politics and established the modern liberal pledge to use government power in the name of broad social good. But the progressives, unable to deliver on all of their promises, soon discovered that Americans retained a powerful commitment to individual freedom. Ironically, the progressive movement helped reestablish the power of conservatism and ensured that America would never be wholly liberal or conservative for generations to come. Michael McGerr's A Fierce Discontent recreates a time of unprecedented turbulence and unending fascination, showing the first American middle-class revolution. Far bolder than the New Deal of FDR or the New Frontier of JFK, the Progressive Era was a time when everything was up for grabs and perfection beckoned.




Rating: - Well rounded
In McGerr's view, progressivism was a broad based Victorian middle class movement dedicated to extending its way of life - sober, abstemious, moderate, associative, protective, hard-working, modern, consumerist if guiltily so - both upward to a profligate and individualist capitalist elite and downward to an unruly and dissipated working class.

Its work was only partially successful - antitrust, regulation, healthcare, communal associations - and ultimately done in by its own contradictions. ... Read More

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Rating: - The Good Old Days
The Progressive Era, notes a review, was "essentially a middle-class revolution fueled by a belief in the sanctity of the home and the need for equality between the sexes. The era's vehement campaigns against drink, prostitution, and divorce and its grappling with class conflict and racism were as much about personal happiness and health as they were about social progress." Another review on this page notes the era's egalitarian expansiveness, and faults Professor McGerr for accentuating the era's middle-class ... Read More

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Rating: - Good Overview of the Progressive Movement
McGerr's book is a valuable resource on helping to define who the progressives were and what they wanted to accomplish. The Progressives were at their peak in influence from the late 19th Century until the end of World War I, from Theodore Roosevelt's administration to Woodrow Wilson's administration. As McGerr stated, Progressives wanted to transform Americans into their own image of a middle class society, uplifting the poorest workers while chastising the wealthiest. It is this transformative vision that makes ... Read More

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Rating: - Ultimately unsatisfying, 2.5 Stars
"Progressivism" is one of the vaguer words in the history of American politics, and we could always do with a new attempt to define it. And Michael McGerr's new book starts out promisingly. There is an apparently detailed description of the very rich, workers and farmers which appears to be based on the latest research. The book is supported with sixty pages of notes, though there are no archival sources, and the primary sources are mostly from the usual suspects (Wilson, Roosevelt, Jane Addams, plus a few memoirs ... Read More

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Rating: - Ambiguities of reform
This well-done account of the rise of the Progressive Movement is as good on the history of the period, and is studded with many interesting details about the Victorian period in the gestation of the great challenge to the world of big business. Notable, and what makes the book out of the ordinary, is depiction of the limits of the movement seen in the account of the movement's attitudes toward segregation. This was also the era of consolidated Jim Crow, where were the Reformer? The book is food for thought indeed given ... Read More

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