Christopher McKnight Nichols is professor of history and Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, at the Ohio State University. An Andrew Carnegie Fellow and award-winning scholar and teacher, Nichols is the author or editor of six books, including Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (2011) and Rethinking American Grand Strategy (2021).

Nancy C. Unger, President of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2021-2023, is Professor of History at Santa Clara University. She is the author of the award-winning biographies Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer (2000; revised paperback 2008), and Belle La Follette: Progressive Era Reformer (2016). Her book Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History (2012), was a California Book Award Finalist.

A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era presents a collection of new historiographic essays covering the years between 1877 and 1920, a period which saw the U.S. emerge from the ashes of Reconstruction to become a world power.
* The single, definitive resource for the latest state of knowledge relating to the history and historiography of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
* Features contributions by leading scholars in a wide range of relevant specialties
* Coverage of the period includes geographic, social, cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, ethnic, racial, gendered, religious, global, and ecological themes and approaches
* In today's era, often referred to as a "second Gilded Age," this book offers relevant historical analysis of the factors that helped create contemporary society
* Fills an important chronological gap in period-based American history collections

Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction: Gilded Excesses, Multiple Progressivisms 1
Christopher McKnight Nichols and Nancy C. Unger
Part I Overview-Definitions, Precursors, and Geographies 5
1 Reconstructing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 7
Heather Cox Richardson
2 Precursors to Gilded Age and Progressive Era Reforms 21
James M. Beeby and Brian M. Ingrassia
3 Urban America 31
Michael B. Kahan
4 The South 44
Amy Louise Wood
5 The Midwest and Far West during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 58
Thomas J. Jablonsky
6 Environment: Nature, Conservation, and the Progressive State 71
Benjamin Johnson
Part II Sex, Race, and Gender 85
7 Gender 87
Kimberly A. Hamlin
8 Inventing Sexuality: Ideologies, Identities, and Practices in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 102
Leigh Ann Wheeler
9 African Americans 116
Omar H. Ali
10 From Dispossessed Wards to Citizen Activists: American Indians Survive the Assimilation Policy Era 124
Alexandra Harmon
11 Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity 137
Julie Greene
Part III Art, Thought, and Culture 149
12 Art and Architecture 151
Alan Lessoff
13 Religion in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 165
Matthew Bowman
14 Journalism 178
Bruce J. Evensen
15 Popular Culture 19
Julia Guarneri
Part IV Economics, Science, and Technology 203
16 American Capitalism: From the Atlantic Economy to Domestic Industrialization 205
Noam Maggor
17 Nonprofit Organizations, Philanthropy, and Civil Society 215
David C. Hammack
18 Labor and Class in the GAPE: Fruitful Opposition and the Specter of the Middle Class 229
David Huyssen
19 Science and Technology 243
Alan I Marcus
20 The Rise of a Modern Concept of "Health" 255
David G. Schuster
Part V Political Leadership 269
21 Gilded Age Presidents 271
Justus D. Doenecke
22 Political Movers and Shakers 284
Karen Pastorello
23 Changing Interpretations of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era 296
Kathleen Dalton
24 Woodrow Wilson 308
Lloyd E. Ambrosius
Part VI Government, Politics, and Law 321
25 Pivotal Elections 323
Sidney M. Milkis and Anthony Sparacino
26 Congress in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 339
Mark Wahlgren Summers
27 Revising Constitutional History 350
Logan E. Sawyer III
28 Radicalism and Conservatism 362
Cristina V. Groeger
Part VII The United States and the World 379
29 Connections, Networks, and the Beginnings of a Global America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 381
Ian Tyrrell
30 Empire, Expansion, and Its Consequences 399
Allan E. S. Lumba
31 The United States in the World during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 410
Katherine Unterman
Part VIII Major Works and Contemporary Relevance 421
32 Decades of Upheaval and Reform 423
Maureen A. Flanagan
33 Influential Works about the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 437
Robert D. Johnston
34 Why the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Still Matter 450
Michael Kazin
Bibliography 454
Index 507