This book was written to reveal the challenges Americans faced during the Progressive Era and to show how their responses helped transform the nation. Combining a narrative on the era with biographies of key participants, significant primary sources, and an annotated bibliography, the topically organized volume offers a lively contextual guide to one of the great turning points in American history.

Table of Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chronology
• Chapter 1. Introduction: The Progressive Era
• Chapter 2. Farmers and Workers Struggle for Justice
• Chapter 3. Progressive Politics
• Chapter 4. The Changing City
• Chapter 5. Women Raise Their Political Voice
• Chapter 6. African Americans in the Progressive Age
• Chapter 7. Literature in the Progressive Age
• Chapter 8. Religion in the Progressive Age
• Chapter 9. President Theodore Roosevelt Takes on Big Business, Big Labor, and Conservation
• Chapter 10. Progressives and Foreign Policy
• Analytical Essays
• Counterfactual Essay: The Election of 1896
• Defining Moments
• Perspectives Essay
• Primary Document Essay
• Biographical Essays
• Mary Harris “Mother” Jones
• Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926)
• Ray Stannard Baker
• Henry Flagler
• George Washington Plunkett of Tammany Hall
• Victoria Woodhull
• Randolph Bourne
• Primary Documents
• 1. Jacob Riis Describes Life among the Urban Poor (1890)
• 2. William Jennings Bryan: Cross of Gold Speech (1896)
• 3. Progressive Party Platform (1912)
• 4. Justice John Marshall Harlan's Dissent to Plessy vs. Ferguson Decision (1896)
• 5. Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech
• 6. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (1899)
• 7. Upton Sinclair Exposes the Meat Industry (1906)
• 8. Samuel McClure Launches the Muckraking Era (1903)
• 9. Lincoln Steffens, Shame of the Cities (1904)
• 10. Cary Nation: Crusader for Temperance (1909)
• 11. Walter Rauschenbusch Calls for a New Age of Christianity (1916)
• 12. John Muir on the National Parks (1901)
• 13. Teddy Roosevelt on Trusts (1901)
• 14. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)
• 15. Jane Addams on Suffrage (1909)
• 16. President Woodrow Wilson's Joint Address to Congress, Leading to a Declaration of War against Germany (1917)
• 17. Eugene V. Debs Defends Freedom of Speech and the Working Class (1918)
• Annotated Bibliography