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The American President is an enthralling account of American presidential actions from the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 to Bill Clinton's last night in office in January 2001. William Leuchtenburg, a prize-winning historian, portrays each of the presidents in a chronicle sparkling with anecdote and wit.

In the first three decades of the 20th century, two groups of radical political theorists — one British and one American — were bound together in a unique ideological relationship. This book provides an examination of the intellectual dialogue that constituted that bond. Drawing on archival research, and employing methods of conceptual analysis, it examines the efforts of these two initially distinctive political movements to forge a single ideology capable of motivating far-reaching reform in both of their countries. In so doing, the book emphasizes the exceptional development of American progressivism and British socialism, arguing that the intellectual inspirations and political programmes of both movements were constantly shaped and reshaped by international ideological exchange. It analyses the complex political demands of these movements and enables the works of their leading protagonists, including G. D. H. Cole, Herbert Croly, Harold Laski, and Walter Lippmann, to emerge as significant contributions to modern political thought.

Bureaus of efficiency were established in America as part of the civic reform agenda during the Progressive era at the beginning of the twentieth century. In some cities they were nonprofit agencies pushing for governmental reform from the outside. In other cities, efficiency bureaus were established by reformers as departments within municipal government, school districts or counties. The goal of such bureaus was to promote efficiency in local government, as a way of fighting political corruption, urban machines and political bosses. Efficiency bureaus sought to professionalize local government through civil service systems, open competitive bidding, separation of public administration from politics, and reorganizing departments to reduce duplication. Efficiency has remained a powerful siren call in American political culture in the twenty-first century. In that respect, little has changed conceptually from the days of the bureaus of efficiency nearly a century earlier. The bureaus may have died out, but not their underlying goal. This volume presents a detailed reconstruction of this phenomenon in American urban history.

First published in 2004, Congress, Progressive Reform and the New American State uses a series of case-studies of reform legislation in Congress during the early twentieth century to explore the nature of progressivism and the processes of political change which resulted in the establishment of the modern American state. Among the topics covered are railroad regulation, labor relations, social policy of the District of Columbia, Republican insurgency, and the nature of Democratic progressivism. This work will be of interest to students of twentieth-century political history, the history of Congress, and the origins of the modern American state.

Greenbaum examines the use of use of myth as a means of social control and examines the corporate mythology of the Gilded Age. Progressive politicians led the opposition to these myths, arguing that government was not to be used to enrich corporations, but to reduce their economic and political power and to increase equity. The progressive challenge redirected government to serve the larger commonwealth and, thus, transformed ordinary lives. Gilded Age mythology, resurrected in the 1980s, restored corporate domination and economic inequity. Through his extensive analysis of the lives of six prominent Progressives, Greenbaum seeks to contravene contemporary mythology. He begins with George Norris of Nebraska, a Republican Congressman and Senator from 1906 until 1942; William E. Borah, Republican of Idaho, who served in the Senate from 1906 until his death in 1940; and Hiram Johnson, who was Republican Governor of California, Progressive Vice Presidential candidate in 1912, and Senator from 1916 until his demise in 1945. These chapters are followed by an examination of William Gibbs McAdoo, a New York business promoter, who was Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, the leading candidate for the 1924 Democratic Presidential nomination, and Senator from California from 1932 until 1938; Bainbridge Colby, a New York legislator, who supported Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and was Wilson's last Secretary of State; and Edward P. Costigan, Colorado Republican, who became the Progressive appointee to the Tariff Commission and Democratic Senator from 1930 through 1936. The volume concludes with an analysis of the progressive impulse and contrasts progressive views with resurrected Gilded Age mythology, the new ideas of the 1980s. An important study for scholars, students, and other researchers interested in progressivism and the role of government in American socioeconomic life and intelligent readers interested in ideas.

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction: Power and Myth -- George Norris: Pragmatism -- William E. Borah: The Wisdom of Our Fathers -- Hiram Johnson: Isolationist -- William Gibbs McAdoo: Business Promoter as Politician -- Bainbridge Colby: Conservative as Progressive -- Edward P. Costigan: Urban Progressive -- Progressives: An Analysis -- Power at the Millennium -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.

In Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea , Bradley C. S. Watson presents an intellectual history of American progressivism as a philosophical-political phenomenon, focusing on how and with what consequences the academic discipline of history came to accept and propagate it. This book offers a meticulously detailed historiography and critique of the insularity and biases of academic culture. It shows how the first scholarly interpreters of progressivism were, in large measure, also its intellectual architects, and later interpreters were in deep sympathy with their premises and conclusions. Too many scholarly treatments of the progressive synthesis were products of it, or at least were insufficiently mindful of two central facts: the hostility of progressive theory to the Founders' Constitution and the tension between progressive theory and the realm of the private, including even conscience itself. The constitutional and religious dimensions of progressive thought-and, in particular, the relationship between the two-remained hidden for much of the twentieth century. This pathbreaking volume reveals how and why this scholarly obfuscation occurred. The book will interest students and scholars of American political thought, the Progressive Era, and historiography, and it will be a useful reference work for anyone in history, law, and political science.