Daniel T. Rodgers

The next definitive work on the Progressive Era.: This is the policy-side answer to Kloppenberg's UNCERTAIN VICTORY. While that book focussed on intellectual links between European (esp. German or French) thought and early American pragmatism, Rodgers seeks more practical applications, well into the 20th century. He is so well versed in the literature that scant references are made to secondary sources. It is rich in the literature of the time, particularly journals, magazines, and show more newspapers from several different countries. Interestingly, unlike Kloppenberg this book examines England and Scotland which provide springboards for American reforms. Rodgers' thesis is that the Europeans tried numerous policies which Americans learned about and then implemented, almost always later than their counterparts across the Atlantic--and sometimes with very limited success. The book is also noteworthy for some of the most practical applications of MODERNISM yet seen in contemporary scholarship. This is a hot topic, largely seen in discussions of art or literature. Here Rodgers takes all that knowledge, absorbs it, and then demonstrates it in action across the POLITICAL spectrum. Despite the enormous research behind it, Rodgers has written an enjoyable, readable work that is of considerable importance. After all, this is the author of the famous article, "An Obituary for the Progressive Movement," (1970) which claimed that there NEVER WAS such a movement. Here Rodgers answers his own claim, saying that the American reform impulse built upon a European foundation and produced policies which survive to the present. My only complaint is that this book is slanted TOWARDS Europe, with maybe 60% of the discussion dwelling across the Atlantic ... the format gets a little tedious, with most chapters beginning in Europe, then the Americans pick up on the policy (welfare, municipal gas/water etc) and then they try it themselves. This is nitpicking, though, for such a substantive, well-researched, lucid work that defines this generation's scholarship on the Progressive Era. show less

Some books win prizes because they're excellent; some books win prizes because they're timely. Chalk Rodgers' Bancroft up to timeliness, I'm afraid. This is a solid history of ideas in America since the seventies: new market-based politics; reactions to and extensions of '60s moral liberalism and relativism; constitutional scholarship; the post-war social sciences and reactions against them, particularly in terms of identity politics; historiography; political philosophy etc etc... He crams show more a lot in, and does a good job showing that the ideas which have taken hold weren't worth the time and effort and money spent on them.

On the other hand, he makes no effort to explain why the ideas that took hold did take hold, so you're left with a few fragmented chapters that aren't connected to each other in any way. He only deals with ideas that took hold of Americans in America, so there's very little context for what's happening. And despite his good analysis, there's very little suggestion that he finds any of these ideas anything other than mildly interesting - how can he *possibly* have written this book without ascending to rage? As one of the most representative pop-culture acts of this time period (and the ideas he describes) could have told him, anger is a gift! This book is too flat too often.

It will be a great teaching tool for undergrads - much easier to assign his chapter on 'power' than to get students to read any of the many thinkers he deals with in that chapter - but it's unlikely to teach anyone older than 30 much they haven't already got by osmosis. The conclusion is dull, focusing more on 9/11 than the far more momentous G.F. Crisis.

In short: a nice metaphor featuring great description, good analysis, but very much lacking in interpretation (*why* should this age have seen such fracture?), judgment (were any of these ideas any good at all?) and fire. show less

This book explains, in a readable and entertaining fashion, the strong influence that European social politics had on American social legislature in the early part of the 20th century.

This book is strongly recommended for anybody interested in American or European history.

painstaking contemporary history, drawing on several US Presidential Administrations and several decades of socio-economic and political thought. Very good read.