This book provides a historical examination of everyday life to reveal how and why Americans during the Progressive Era structured their world and made their lives meaningful.
Tremendous change occurred during the first two decades of the 20th century. By 1910, about 26 million Americans attended movies weekly—a form of popular entertainment that didn't even exist five years earlier. Cars were a rare novelty at the beginning of the century, but by 1916 nearly a half million Model Ts had been sold. In the years surrounding World War I, women finally won the right to vote, and more than a half million blacks migrated from the South to the North.
The Progressive Era represented a tumultuous time for Americans as they attempted to come to terms with a rapidly emerging modern, urban, and industrial society, and ultimately the dislocations caused by World War I. Steven L. Piott's Daily Life in the Progressive Era tells the story of how all Americans—black and white, women and men, rural inhabitants and urban residents, workers and employers, consumers and producers—contended with new cultural attitudes, persistent racial and class tensions, and the power struggles of evolving classes.
This book provides a broad examination of American society between 1900 and 1920. Organized thematically, it covers rural and urban America, the changing nature of work, race relations, popular culture, citizen activism, and society during wartime. Appropriate for general readers as well as students of history, Daily Life in the Progressive Era provides an informed and compelling narrative history and analysis of daily life within the context of broad historical patterns.
Features
• Includes a chronology of major events between 1890 and 1920
• Presents numerous photographs and images that illustrate important points throughout the narrative
• Provides a detailed bibliography of sources
• Includes both a detailed index and a brief glossary of key terms
Highlights
• Offers one of the most complete descriptions and analyses of daily life during the Progressive Era
• Supports the current curricular emphasis on cultural and social history by examining the American people from "the bottom up" as well as "the top down"
• Invites use as a resource, a base for further discussion, and a reference text
Steven L. Piott is professor of history at Clarion University in Clarion, PA. His published works include The Anti-Monopoly Persuasion: Popular Resistance to the Rise of Big Business in the Midwest; Holy Joe: Joseph W. Folk and the Missouri Idea; Giving Voters a Voice: The Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in America; and American Reformers, 1870-1920: Progressives in Word and Deed..
