Why am I passionate about this?

I study the Gilded Age and Progressive Era because it has so many practical applications for the present.  As we face our own Gilded Age of enormous technological achievements paired with ongoing problems stemming from what Bob La Follette called “the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many,” why reinvent the wheel?  What worked for progressive reformers in their struggles to create a more equitable and just society?  What didn’t work, and why? To help answer those questions I wrote Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer and Belle La Follette: Progressive Era Reformer, and co-edited A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.


I wrote

Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer

By Nancy C. Unger,

Book cover of Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer

What is my book about?

The endlessly fascinating Robert La Follette (1855-1925) represented Wisconsin in the House of Representatives, as governor, and, for twenty-one years,…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Jungle

Nancy C. Unger Why did I love this book?

First published in 1906, this classic muckraking novel set in the stockyards of Chicago is an excellent introduction to the myriad problems of the Gilded Age, including vast corruption. The gripping story follows an immigrant family as their hopes for achieving the American Dream through hard work are slowly ground into bitterness and despair. Sinclair wrote The Jungle to promote socialism, but his descriptions of the meatpacking industry were so vivid and appalling that the book contributed instead to progressive reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.  According to Sinclair, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach.” The first half of the novel is better than the second, but it remains a gripping revelation of why progressive reform was so desperately needed.

By Upton Sinclair,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Jungle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First serialized in a newspaper in 1905, The Jungle is a classic of American literature that led to the creation of food-safety standards.

While investigating the meatpacking industry in Chicago, author and novelist Upton Sinclair discovered the brutal conditions that immigrant families faced. While his original intention was to bring this to the attention of the American public, his book was instead hailed for bringing food safety to the forefront of people's consciousness.

With its inspired plot and vivid descriptions, Upton Sinclair's classic tale of immigrant woe is now available as an elegantly designed clothbound edition with an elastic closure…


Book cover of America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s-1920s

Nancy C. Unger Why did I love this book?

There are many books on the reforms of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era—this one is the best.  Flanagan, who writes clearly and engagingly, centers this work on four themes: politics, social justice, economics, and foreign policy. Every chapter features lively stories and helpful illustrations. While Flanagan certainly includes excellent coverage of vital federal and state reforms, she is particularly effective in her coverage of how every day Americans, including women and various minority groups, responded to the problems confronting society.

By Maureen A. Flanagan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked America Reformed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This comprehensive and accessible text is for use in classes on the Progressive Era alone, or in a combined class on the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, which many universities teach. It could also be used as one of several titles in the general survey (1876 - present), or in a 20th century U.S. History Survey. Flanagan's text covers all aspects of the era, political (domestic and international), economic, and social/cultural. She also incoporates the perspectives
of women, immigrants, and minority groups into the history of the era.


Book cover of Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century

Nancy C. Unger Why did I love this book?

This short book, filled with delightful illustrations, is so much fun that you don’t immediately notice that it’s a powerful history of how urbanization and industrialization led to a new mass culture. The particular focus is on the rise of the amusement park, and the controversies that arose over how people “should” spend their leisure time and discretionary income. When the Russian revolutionary Maxim Gory toured Coney Island in 1907, he concluded that in America, amusement (rather than religion) had become the opiate of the masses. This book, a classic, remains relevant, inspiring thoughtful analysis concerning the ongoing power of the leisure industry and its impact on how people think, live, and spend their money. 

By John F. Kasson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Amusing the Million as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Coney Island: the name still resonates with a sense of racy Brooklyn excitement, the echo of beach-front popular entertainment before World War I. Amusing the Million examines the historical context in which Coney Island made its reputation as an amusement park and shows how America's changing social and economic conditions formed the basis of a new mass culture. Exploring it afresh in this way, John Kasson shows Coney Island no longer as the object of nostalgia but as a harbinger of modernity--and the many photographs, lithographs, engravings, and other reproductions with which he amplifies his text support this lively thesis.


Book cover of Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Nancy C. Unger Why did I love this book?

If you’re tired of historians spoon-feeding you their interpretations of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, this great selection of the period’s documents provides an unfiltered look at what people were thinking and doing at the time in their own words. The documents are arranged thematically with four or five per section: The New South; The New West; Native Americans; Big Business; Gilded Age Society; Working People, Immigrants in the Industrial Age; Populism; The Coming of Jim Crow; Labor Protest Rebuilding American Institutions; The Political System; Imperialism and Anti-imperialism, and the Debate about World War I. This is a user-friendly collection that doesn’t go too deep into any one person or event, yet introduces the key issues of the period.

By William A. Link, Susannah J. Link,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gilded Age and Progressive Era as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This volume presents documents that illustrate the variety of experiences and themes involved in the transformation of American political, economic, and social systems during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (1870-1920). * Includes nearly 70 documents which cover the period from the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the 1870s through World War I * Explores the experiences of people during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era from a variety of diverse perspectives, including important political and cultural leaders as well as everyday individuals * Charts the nationalization of American life and the establishment of the United States…


Book cover of Ida: A Sword Among Lions

Nancy C. Unger Why did I love this book?

To understand American race relations today, the history of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a vital starting point. In the wake of the Reconstruction, legalized segregation formalized institutional racism. With no federal lynch law, many states and municipalities refused to prosecute lynchings, striving instead to perpetuate myths of lynching as the only appropriate response to naturally lascivious Black men who desired inherently pure and virtuous white women. This exceptional biography traces the fascinating life of journalist and women’s suffrage advocate Ida Wells, who fearlessly fought against racism, segregation, and, especially, lynching. She was a leader in progressive era reform, despite the discrimination she endured even from many progressives due to her sex and her race.

By Paula J. Giddings,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ida as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B. Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon

From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining “a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history,” comes the definitive biography of Ida B. Wells—crusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for women’s suffrage and against segregation and lynchings

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emerged—through her fierce political battles and progressive thinking—as the first “modern” black women in the nation’s history.

Wells began her activist…


Explore my book 😀

Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer

By Nancy C. Unger,

Book cover of Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer

What is my book about?

The endlessly fascinating Robert La Follette (1855-1925) represented Wisconsin in the House of Representatives, as governor, and, for twenty-one years, in the U.S. Senate.  As the nation rapidly transformed into an urban-industrial giant, he tackled some of its biggest problems, including political corruption, environmental devastation, and worker exploitation.  “The supreme issue, involving all the others,” he declared, “is the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many.” La Follette was a leader in the fight to more equitably redistribute the nation’s wealth and power.

La Follette’s wife, Belle Case La Follette, was a leader in the fight for women’s suffrage and racial equality as well as world peace. Together they created a remarkably close family, generating a political dynasty.

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The Bloomsbury Photographs

By Maggie Humm,

Book cover of The Bloomsbury Photographs

Maggie Humm Author Of Radical Woman: Gwen John & Rodin

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Woolfian Gym devotee World-traveller

Maggie's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group’s key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs. Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, and holidays.

The Bloomsbury…

The Bloomsbury Photographs

By Maggie Humm,

What is this book about?

An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group's key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs

Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private insight into their lives.

Maggie Humm brings together a curated selection of these photographs to offer us a fresh portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, showing them in a new, domestic intimacy. She brings to life the texture of Bloomsbury: their pastimes, children, clothes, houses, servants, pets, holidays. Several photographs are…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Progressive Era, the Gilded Age, and New York State?

The Gilded Age 38 books
New York State 545 books