James Holt offers a new answer to the question "What happened to progressivism in the Republican party?" The battles over the Payne-Aldrich tariff, the powers of Speaker Cannon, military preparedness, the elections of 1912 and 1916, and Wilson's New Freedom are used to exemplify the attempts of insurgent Republican Senators to reconcile progressive ideals with party commitment. But these men, Robert La Follette, Albert Cummins, George Norris, and William Borah among them, found that on the national level their efforts aided only the Democrats and that a third party was precluded by their own partisanship and their dependence on Republican constituencies.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the most powerful partisan figure in the contemporary U.S. Congress. How this came to be, and how the majority party in the House has made control of the speakership a routine matter, is far from straightforward. Fighting for the Speakership provides a comprehensive history of how Speakers have been elected in the U.S. House since 1789, arguing that the organizational politics of these elections were critical to the construction of mass political parties in America and laid the groundwork for the role they play in setting the agenda of Congress today. Jeffery Jenkins and Charles Stewart show how the speakership began as a relatively weak office, and how votes for Speaker prior to the Civil War often favored regional interests over party loyalty. While struggle, contention, and deadlock over House organization were common in the antebellum era, such instability vanished with the outbreak of war, as the majority party became an "organizational cartel" capable of controlling with certainty the selection of the Speaker and other key House officers. This organizational cartel has survived Gilded Age partisan strife, Progressive Era challenge, and conservative coalition politics to guide speakership elections through the present day. Fighting for the Speakership reveals how struggles over House organization prior to the Civil War were among the most consequential turning points in American political history.

This powerful book reminds us of the enormous power the nation accords its political leaders and how in the significant period, 1897–1913, these leaders failed to meet their responsibilities. Their inadequacies, the authors feel, delayed the administration of justice for all citizens, neglected the Negro, and seriously impaired the future effectiveness of their own once viable, successful, and justly proud Republican Party. The authors follow the maneuvers of McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Senators Aldrich, Platt, Allison, and Spooner, and House Speaker "Uncle" Joe Cannon as they juggled pressing domestic questions, perpetuating themselves in power without really confronting the public need. From the outset, when the party came into power in 1897 under remarkably auspicious circumstances, until it met final defeat at the hands of Woodrow Wilson in 1912, the Republican leaders laid a foundation by default for the Democratic return to power. Their neglect of major national problems afforded the Democrats a golden opportunity to appropriate those issues as their own.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH. Politician, evangelist, and reformer William Jennings Bryan was the most popular public speaker of his time. In this acclaimed biography—the first major reconsideration of Bryan’s life in forty years–award-winning historian Michael Kazin illuminates his astonishing career and the richly diverse and volatile landscape of religion and politics in which he rose to fame. Kazin vividly re-creates Bryan’s tremendous appeal, showing how he won a passionate following among both rural and urban Americans, who saw in him not only the practical vision of a reform politician but also the righteousness of a pastor. Bryan did more than anyone to transform the Democratic Party from a bulwark of laissez-faire to the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1896, 1900, and 1908, Bryan was nominated for president, and though he fell short each time, his legacy–a subject of great debate after his death–remains monumental. This nuanced and brilliantly crafted portrait restores Bryan to an esteemed place in American history.

Sometime during the first two decades of the 20th century, the participation of the American electorate began its plummet; voter turnouts fell in each election after record heights in 1890. Kornbluh (history, Michigan State U.) examines mass political behavior in 20 successive national elections, arguing that the rapid decline of electoral participation was gradual and a result of fundamental social change, a conclusion maintained by the author to be at odds with previous literature focusing on discrete political events to explain voter demobilization. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Zusammenfassung: This book shows how inflation can disrupt politics and society. With no recent precedent, mild inflation spurred mass protests, myriad remedial schemes, and partisan political reversals between 1910 and 1914. Then wartime demand and inflationary fiscal policy doubled consumer prices from 1915 to 1920, triggering waves of strikes, food riots by immigrant housewives, class conflict, and elite fears of revolution. Middle-class households resented falling real incomes. Even more than today, food prices dominated consumer concerns. Yet farmers wanted high commodity prices. Accordingly, both sides blamed and attacked meatpackers, wholesalers, and retailers. Then as now, inflation hurt whichever party held the White House. Fumbling responses by Wilson's administration and the Federal Reserve led to hesitant price controls, punitive raids and prosecutions, and a now-familiar fallback--high interest rates in 1920 and subsequent recession. An epilogue traces continuing popular and political responses to changes in the consumer price index down to 2020. David I. Macleod is Professor Emeritus of History at Central Michigan University, where he taught American social and political history. His publications include Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920 and The Age of the Child: Children in America, 1890-1920.