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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.
One of the most important books to emerge from the Progressive era,
The Promise of American Life offered a blueprint for a modern
activist government that had enormous impact on intellectuals
coming of age before World War I.
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