The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920

by John Whiteclay Chambers II

Between 1890 and 1920, the forces accompanying industrialization sent the familiar nineteenth-century world plummeting toward extinction. The traditional countryside with its villages and family farms was eclipsed by giant corporations and sprawling cities. America appeared headed into an unknown future. In lively, accessible prose, John Chambers incorporates the latest scholarship about the social, cultural, political, and economic changes which produced modern America. He illuminates the experiences of blacks, Asians, Latinos, as well as other working men and women in the cities and countryside as they struggled to improve their lives in a transformed economy. He explores the dimensions of the new consumer society and the new information and entertainment industries: newspapers, magazines, the movies. Striding these pages are many of the prominent individuals who shaped the attitudes and institutions of modern America: J. P. Morgan and corporate reorganization; Jane Addams and the origin of modern social work; Mary Pickford and the new star-oriented motion picture industry; and the radical labor challenge of “Big Bill” Haywood and the “Wobblies.” While recognizing a “progressive ethos”—a mixture of idealistic vision and pragmatic reforms—which dominated the mainstream reforms that characterized the period, Chambers elaborates the role of civic volunteerism as well as the state in achieving directed social change. He also emphasizes the importance of radical and conservative political forces in shaping the so-called “Progressive Era.” The revised edition in this classic work has an updated bibliography and a new preface, both of which incorporate particularly the new social and cultural research of the past decade.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

350 pages, Paperback

First published February 29, 1992

Reviews

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the older synthetic works on the progressive era still available for classroom use, but it has aged well. Smart, well written, well organized, concise yet remarkably complete.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for a good, broad overview of the the U.S. between 1900-1920, with an emphasis on the Progressive movement (a broad, somewhat nebulous term that covers everything from the KKK to the Pure Food and Drug Act to the 18th and 19th amendments) then this will serve nicely. The author covers broad historical trends and also gives some good asides as to trends in historical scholarship that have sought to make sense of this period. That being said, this is a somewhat academic book, and to some degree reads like one. I would not describe the prose as lively so much as sturdy, direct, and efficient. It's not exactly a page-turner for a casual reader of American history, but if you're a bit of a geek about the stuff (I completely fall into that camp) then you've probably read much more turgid, dense, and workmanlike prose. I do feel that the final, wrap-up chapter stretches out a bit too long. It goes on too long to be an efficient summary and in many cases throws in new info that would have been better if included in the chapters in which the broader topics being reviewed were first discussed. Although he touches a bit on popular culture and advances in fields like technology and intellectual thought, this book largely focuses on political events and major social movements and economic trends. It's an interesting time period that still doesn't have one big, massive historical overview to read (the Oxford book on this era has been delayed for nearly a decade at this point) so smaller books like this are your only real option if you want a general history of the period. For that purpose, it is sufficient, if not exhaustively thorough.