A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era.
New York: Hill and Wang / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.
Links:
- Steven J. Diner, Rutgers University, Newark.
- Steven J. Diner, Have You Met Rutgers-Newark?
- Gilded Age, Wikipedia.
- Progressive Era, Wikipedia.
- Second Industrial Revolution, Wikipedia.
- Economic history of the United States: Late 19th century, Early 20th century, Wikipedia.
This book is very much a labor history of the period it covers, roughly 1890-1920. This is not made explicit in the book's title but one might glean it from the chapter titles. Most chapters focus on the labor history of particular occupational or social groups: industrial workers; immigrants; farmers and other rural people; African Americans; white collar workers; professionals. When discussing a group's difficult working conditions the author frequently vaguely attributes it to capitalism and goes no further. This is not a work of business history or economic history; also, it is not a history of the progressive movement, though the topic arises occasionally, especially in the penultimate chapter.