Departments

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Gilded Age

  • 6/25/2023

    The Unlikely Success of James Garfield in an Age of Division

    by C.W. Goodyear

    In a bitterly divided and restive political climate, James Garfield was too old, too esconced in the Washington establishment, and too conciliatory to be a credible candidate or a successful President. But he did ultimately change politics, though he didn't live to see it. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/27/2022

    The Robber Barons Had Nothing on Musk

    by David Nasaw

    Like the Gilded Age robber barons, Elon Musk's self-made mythos hides the government subsidies supporting his businesses. Unlike them, he has the werewhithal to move financial markets to his advantage through Twitter. 

  • SOURCE: San Francisco Examiner
    7/19/2022

    Will Stanford University Acknowledge its Bloody Origin Story?

    “What I expect Stanford to do, as I always expected, is that they’ll ignore it,” says Richard White, whose new book argues that the university's president David Starr Jordan covered up murder and spread the lie that founder Jane Stanford died of natural causes in order to preserve her bequest. 

  • SOURCE: NBC News
    4/27/2022

    Musk's Twitter Bid Harkens Back to Hearst

    Richard White and Brad DeLong consider how the megabillionaire's bid for Twitter stacks up against other efforts by the ultra-rich to build media empires – is it more about attention and less about advancing financial interests? 

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    4/21/2022

    Union Organizing in the Long Shadow of the Gilded Age

    by Daisy Pitkin

    On listening to Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library as librarians perform the kind of social services Carnegie deplored (and try to organize a union, which he deplored more). 

  • 2/13/2022

    The Gilded Age's Original "Galentine's Day"

    by Anya Jabour

    The search for alternatives to the compulsory heterosexual coupledom of Valentine's Day could learn from the example of the "Perfect Little Ladies" of 1890s Rochester, New York.

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    2/1/2022

    How the Left Lost the Constitution

    by Benjamin Morse

     Law professors Joseph Fiskin and William Forbath revisit the Reconstruction Amendments to argue that they represent a fusion of a "democracy-of-opportunity" tradition in the law that embraces an affirmative government duty to redistribute wealth. 

  • SOURCE: Smithsonian
    1/20/2022

    The True History Behind HBO's "The Gilded Age"

    by Kimberly A. Hamlin

    The new series follows fictional characters but is well-grounded in the innovations and inequalities that characterized urban America in the late nineteenth century, thanks in large part to the work of the show's historical consultant Professor Eric Armstrong Dunbar.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/9/2021

    How Will Jeff Bezos Spend His Billions Now?

    by Margaret O'Mara

    John D. Rockefeller used philanthropy to blunt harsh criticism of his business practices and the social dysfunction represented by his immense wealth. What will his 21st-century analogue Jeff Bezos do for an image-burnishing second act? And will it be about service to the public or service to Bezos? 

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
    9/10/2020

    History and Gentrification Clash in a Gilded Age Resort

    A proposal to redevelop a section of Newport, Rhode Island far from the city's typical tourist destinations has generated an unlikely alliance of low-income residents who fear displacement and affluent historic preservation advocates. 

  • SOURCE: Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
    4/7/2020

    SHGAPE Prizes 2020

    by Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

    Andrew Huebner, Caroline Grego, Alana Toulin and Mark C. Boxell are winners of annual prizes from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 

  • SOURCE: New Republic
    6-13-18

    Lessons From the Gilded Age

    by Sarah Jones

    America today has a lot in common with that bygone era of monopolies and gross inequality. But will the country respond similarly?