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

by John Whiteclay Chambers II

This book describes and analyzes America during the "Progressive Era" - a time that saw the country's transformation into a modern, urban, industrial society. Using an organizing theme of "new interventionism" - the unprecedented willingness of Americans of the time to become actively involved with the economy, society and world affairs - the book examines the economic, social, political and international shifts that resulted from modernization. It covers all major events and historical figures of the period, including detail on all the major legislation and other domestic and foreign governmental actions. The author received the Best Book Award from the Society for Military History for "To Raise an The Draft Comes to Modern America".

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 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.