"Buenker and Kantowicz have edited an excellent, handy reference guide. . . . Nearly everyone interested in the Progressive Era will find some important use for this volume." Choice

The Progressive Era, the period in the United States between 1898 and 1917, was a time of great social, political, and industrial change. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, an event that signaled the emergence of the United States as a great power, the country soon was involved in its first overseas guerrilla war, in the Philippines. Vast changes in communications and transportation, immigration and migration patterns, social mores, gender roles, family structure, class structure, work patterns, business methods, education, intellectual life, religion, the professions, technology, science, medicine, and much else were transforming the scope and feel of people's lives and relationships. In many ways what happened in this era set the agenda for the rest of the 20th century. The Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era is the most comprehensive and coherent reference work on the Progressive Era. Through its chronology, introductory essay, bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the key events, people, organizations, and ideas of the period, this resource is a lively, complete, and accessible overview of this significant era.

Published in Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial year, this fourth volume in The History of Wisconsin series covers the twenty tumultuous years between the World's Columbian Exposition and the First World War when Wisconsin essentially reinvented itself, becoming the nation's "laboratory of democracy." The period known as the Progressive Era began to emerge in the mid-1890s. A sense of crisis and a widespread clamor for reform arose in reaction to rapid changes in population, technology, work, and society. Wisconsinites responded with action: their advocacy of women's suffrage, labor rights and protections, educational reform, increased social services, and more responsive government led to a veritable flood of reform legislation that established Wisconsin as the most progressive state in the union. As governor and U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., was the most celebrated of the Progressives, but he was surrounded by a host of pragmatic idealists from politics, government, and the state university. Although the Progressives frequently disagreed over priorities and tactics, their values and core beliefs coalesced around broad-based participatory democracy, the application of scientific expertise to governance, and an active concern for the welfare of all members of society-what came to be known as "the Wisconsin Idea."

Religious, political, social, and health reform earmarked the Progressive Era. The era's health reform movement—like today's clean living movement—saw campaigns against alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and sexuality. It included crusades for exercise, vegetarian diets, and alternative health care and concerns about eugenics and new diseases. Covering the years leading up to the Progressive Era through the 1920s, this book provides entries on the central figures, events, crusades, legislation, publications and terms of the health reform movements, while a detailed timeline ties health reform to political, social, and religious movements. A valuable resource for scholars, students, and laymen interested in earlier health reform movements.

The period from 1913 to 1933 is not often seen as a coherent entity in the history of the United States. It is more often viewed in terms of two distinct periods with the pre-war era of political engagement, idealism, and reform known as “progressivism” separated by World War I from the materialism, conservatism and disengagement of the “prosperous” 1920s. To many postwar observers and later historians, the entry of the United States into the European conflict in 1917 marked not just a dramatic departure in foreign relations, but also the end of an era of reform. This second edition of Historical Dictionary from the Great War to the Great Depression covers the history of this period through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about a vital period in U.S. history.

The Gilded Age was an important three-decade period in American history. It was a time of transition, when the United States began to recover from its Civil War and post-war rebuilding phase. It was as a time of progress in technology and industry, of regression in race relations, and of stagnation in politics and foreign affairs. It was a time when poor southerners began farming for a mere share of the crop rather than for wages, when pioneers settled in the harsh land and climate of the Great Plains, and when hopeful prospectors set out in search of riches in the gold fields out West. The Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age relates the history of the major events, issues, people, and themes of the American "Gilded Age" (1869-1899). This period of unprecedented economic growth and technical advancement is chronicled in this reference and includes a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries.