American politics during the first two decades of the 20th century are typically presented in the context of two major themes: the Progressive reform movement and the national dominance of the Republican Party, with Republican politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette portrayed as the dominant political force behind Progressivism on the national stage. In this book, David Sarasohn challenges the assumptions of the second theme in describing the role of the Democratic Party in the first, arguing that it was in fact the Democrats who were the main party promoting Progressive reforms in national politics in this period.

The main figure behind the party's focus on these reforms, Sarasohn argues, was William Jennings Bryan. Though thrice defeated in his bids for the presidency, as the dominant force in Democratic party politics during this period Bryan was able to commit the national party to a range of antitrust measures and social reforms. Such support, he posits, was essential to the passage of Theodore Roosevelt's legislative agenda and promoted William Howard Taft to pursue a vigorous antitrust effort as president. It was this support that made the Democrats the beneficiaries of the Progressive surge in the 1912 election, which Sarasohn asserts would have been won by Woodrow Wilson even without the Republican Party's split that year. Sarasohn goes on to credit the Democratic majorities in Congress with many of the major Progressive achievements of Wilson's first term in office, even going so far as to claim that the president's successful reelection in 1916 was more the consequence of this effort than the Wilson's own achievements.

Sarasohn's book is a provocative challenge to much of the traditional historical interpretation of politics during the Progressive Era. While some of his arguments are less well supported than others, they force the reader to reconsider the motive forces behind reform on the national political scene. Nobody interested in the Progressive movement, or in the politics of the period, can afford to pass on reading this lively and challenging study, which sheds light on some often overlooked political dynamics of the era. ( )