ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NEWSWEEK/THE DAILY BEAST, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE PROGRESSIVEThe definitive history of the reformers, radicals, and idealists who fought for a different America, from the abolitionists to Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky.While the history of the left is a long story of idealism and determination, it has also been a story of movements that failed to gain support from mainstream America. In American Dreamers, M...

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH.Politician, evangelist, and reformer William Jennings Bryan was the most popular public speaker of his time. In this acclaimed biography—the first major reconsideration of Bryan’s life in forty years–award-winning historian Michael Kazin illuminates his astonishing career and the richly diverse and volatile landscape of religion and politics ...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceOne of Kirkus Reviews' ten best US history books of 2022A leading historian tells the story of the United States' most enduring political party and its long, imperfect and newly invigorated quest for "moral capitalism," from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden.One of Kirkus Reviews' 40 most anticipated books of 2022One of Vulture's "49 books we can't wait to read ...

From the depression of the 1890s through World War I, construction tradesman held an important place in San Francisco's economic, political, and social life. Michael Kazin's award-winning study delves into how the city’s Building Trades Council (BTC) created, accumulated, used, and lost their power. He traces the rise of the BTC into a force that helped govern San Francisco, controlled its potential progress, and articulated an ideology that made sense of the changes sweeping the West and ...

In The Populist Persuasion**, the distinguished historian Michael Kazin guides readers through the expressions of conflict between powerful elites and "the people" that have run through our civic life, filling it with discord and meaning from the birth of the United States until the present day.**Kazin argues persuasively that the power of populism lies in its adaptable nature. Across the political spectrum, commentators paste the label on...

Leading historians offer the first look at Biden’s four years in the White HouseThe Presidency of Joseph R. Biden presents a first draft of history by providing insights into how this one-term president fits within the broader historical forces shaping the United States in the twenty-first century. Acclaimed political historian Julian Zelizer brings together some of today’s leading scholars to give balanced and strikingly original assessments of the major ...

In Teaching America, more than 20 leading thinkers sound the alarm over a crisis in citizenship—and lay out a powerful agenda for reform. The book’s unprecedented roster of authors includes Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Senator Jon Kyl, Senator Bob Graham, Secretary Rod Paige, Alan Dershowitz, Juan Williams, Glenn Reynolds, Michael Kazin, Frederick Hess, Andrew Rotherham, Mike Feinberg, Seth Andrew, Mark Bauerlein and more.Their message: To remain America, our country has to give it...

A spectacular example of collective protest, the Great Strike of 1877--actually a sequence of related actions--was America's first national strike and the first major strike against the railroad industry. In some places, non-railroad workers also abandoned city businesses, creating one of the nation's first general strikes. Mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers, the Great Strikes of 1877 transformed the nation's political landscape, shifting the primary political focus from Reconstru...

The sociologist Daniel Bell was an uncommonly acute observer of the structural forces transforming the United States and other advanced societies in the twentieth century. The titles of Bell’s major books—The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)—became hotly debated frameworks for understanding the era when they were published.In Defining the Age, Paul Starr and...

The sociologist Daniel Bell was an uncommonly acute observer of the structural forces transforming the United States and other advanced societies in the twentieth century. The titles of Bell’s major books—The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)—became hotly debated frameworks for understanding the era when they were published.In Defining the Age, Paul Starr and...

It's a strange day when a New York Times conservative columnist is forced to admit that the left is winning, but as David Brooks wrote recently, "the American left is on the cusp of a great victory." Among Americans under thirty, 43 percent had a favorable view of socialism, while only 32 percent had a favorable view of capitalism. Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans questioned the fundamental tenets of capitalism and expressed openness to a socialist alternative...

Nearly every recent poll finds that most voters agree with views historically labeled as liberal: a hike in the minimum wage, government-mandated health insurance for every American, stronger gun control laws, broader sex education programs, laws that would make it easier for unions to organize, and the use of diplomacy instead of war to combat terrorism. But as a conservative presidential administration exits, how can progressives step into the breach?In Search of Progressive ...