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Although Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan lost the presidential elections of 1896, 1900, and 1908, he was the most influential political figure of his era. In this astutely argued book, Gerard N. Magliocca explores how Bryan's effort to reach the White House energized conservatives across the nation and caused a transformation in constitutional law. Responding negatively to the Populist agenda, the Supreme Court established a host of new constitutional principles during the 1890s. Many of them proved long-lasting and highly consequential, including the \"separate but equal\" doctrine supporting racial segregation, the authorization of the use of force against striking workers, and the creation of the liberty of contract. The judicial backlash of the 1890s-the most powerful the United States has ever experienced-illustrates vividly the risks of seeking fundamental social change. Magliocca concludes by examining the lessons of the Populist experience for advocates of change in our own divisive times.

With the centennial this year of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, this article examines the antagonistic relationship between American Christian fundamentalism and science, particularly evolution and other scientific knowledge challenging literal biblical interpretation. While the trial itself spanned only eleven days, its shadow has been quite long indeed. The article analyzes the background of the trial, fundamentalism then and now—including a later doubling down, contesting interpretations of the trial’s outcome, misremembrances and revisionism in the historical appropriations of the trial, and developments in evolutionary theory relevant to religion. In the process of these analyses, the article evidences the relationships of the Scopes trial on evolution and religion to law, politics, secondary and higher education, and communications and media. Finally, the article highlights past opportunities missed and lessons to be learned that might lessen conflict between religion and science in the future.

The untold story of the catastrophic heat wave that brought Gilded Age New York to its knees--and kick-started Theodore Roosevelt's political career.

The phonograph presented American presidential aspirants with an opportunity to surmount eighteenth-century campaigning standards and meet the challenges of an expanding democracy and electorate. Thomas Edison’s invention—with its corresponding records—arguably was the first mechanical media technology to find its way into political campaigning on a mass scale. By 1908, canned, recorded speeches were poised to become a marketable alternative to soliciting ballots in person while also facilitating a candidate’s direct engagement with voters, thus enabling contenders and media firms like Edison’s National Phonograph Company to curate personas that were sold both commercially and at the polls. As a result, the phonograph’s practical role allowed the public to hear candidates directly and in their own words, marking an important but underrecognized step forward in the democratization of access to information (and the concomitant risk of manipulation and distortion that came along with it) that one finds in today’s social media.

The 1896 Democratic National Convention simultaneously proposed a radically new trajectory for American industrial expansion, harshly repudiated its own incumbent president, and rudely overturned the party's traditional regional and social hierarchy. The passion that attended these decisions was deeply embedded in the traditional alliances and understandings of the past, in the careers and futures of the party's most prominent leaders and most insignificant ward heelers, and in the personal relations of men who had long served together in the halls of Congress. This passion was continuously on display in the Chicago Coliseum, shaped by the rhythm of parliamentary ritual and the physical architecture of the convention hall. William Jennings Bryan anticipated the moment when pathos would be at its height and chose that moment to give his 'Cross of Gold' address, thus harnessing passion to his personal ambition and winning the presidential nomination.

The Scopes trial has long been interpreted through claims about science and religion and about individual rights and liberties. This article recovers a different debate about the trial's political history that emerged in the later 1920s and resonated down the twentieth century. Here the trial figured as a fraught national circus, which raised difficult questions about the relationship between media spectacle and cultural conflict in the United States. The trial's circus dynamics intensified the conflicts it staged without ever actually resolving them; this trap was then perceived and negotiated in different ways by contemporary liberals, conservatives, socialists, and far-right activists.

Like most historians, the author has here to tell you a story, this one about two men who began their most important work together approximately 100 years ago. Unlike most historians, he will be explicit about his message. Perhaps nothing in this story mattered as much as the fact that the United States government was not prepared institutionally to undertake a leading role in world affairs in 1919. This story is part of a bigger, more important story about the debate over how much the United States should be involved in the world. Wilson and House were one key part of this important debate.

Murray Rothbard’s The Progressive Era contains nine full chapters of Rothbard’s unfinished manuscript as well as later published essays on material he wanted to discuss (Rothbard 2017). Chapter 9, “The National Civic Federation: Big Business Organized for Progressivism,” documents the cartelizing state and local reforms pushed by big business, big government, and court intellectuals in the early twentieth century. In Chapter 10, of which only notes remain because it was unfortunately not written, Rothbard would have continued his analysis of local Progressive Era interventions by analyzing both their political and urban reforms. Using his published writings and lectures, this paper discusses what Rothbard would have written about in the tenth chapter of the book.