Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920

"Fascinating.... A major work by a leading historian at the top of his game—at once engaging and tightly argued." —The New York Times Book Review

“Dazzling cultural history: smart, provocative, and gripping. It is also a book for our times, historically grounded, hopeful, and filled with humane, just, and peaceful possibilities.” —The Washington Post

An illuminating and authoritative history of America in the years between the Civil War and World War I, Jackson Lears’s Rebirth of a Nation was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In the half-century between the Civil War and World War I, widespread yearning for a new beginning permeated American public life. Dreams of spiritual, moral, and physical rebirth formed the foundation for the modern United States, inspiring its leaders with imperial ambition. Theodore Roosevelt's desire to recapture frontier vigor led him to promote U.S. interests throughout Latin America. Woodrow Wilson's vision of a reborn international order drew him into a war to end war. Andrew Carnegie's embrace of philanthropy coincided with his creation of the world's first billion-dollar corporation, United States Steel. Presidents and entrepreneurs helped usher the nation into the modern era, but sometimes the consequences of their actions failed to match the grandeur of their hopes.

Award-winning historian Jackson Lears richly chronicles this momentous period when America reunited and began to form the world power of the twentieth century. Lears vividly captures imperialists, Gilded Age mavericks, and vaudeville entertainers, and illuminates the roles played by a variety of seekers, male and female, from populist farmers to avant-garde artists and writers to progressive reformers. Some were motivated by their own visions of Christianity; all were swept up in longings for revitalization.

In these years marked by wrenching social conflict and vigorous political debate, a modern America emerged and came to dominance on a world stage. Illuminating and authoritative, Rebirth of a Nation brilliantly weaves the remarkable story of this crucial epoch into a masterful work of history.

“One of cultural history’s masters of linking popular moods and ideas with arts, philosophies, industries, and commodities.” - The New York Review of Books

“Jackson Lears has become the historian of American yearning. . . . He excels at the miniature portrait, and his richly associative imagination enables him to make telling use of the Cecil B. De Mille-sized case he assembled for Rebirth of a Nation.” - Patricia O'Toole, The American Scholar

“Jackson Lears is a formidable, compellingly original cultural and intellectual historian. . . . Rebirth of a Nation is Lears’ most ambitious work yet, and it builds brilliantly on his earlier projects. . . . What makes Rebirth of a Nation so readable—beyond the author’s writerly facility—is Lears’ skillful mining of original cultural references and his strikingly drawn portraits. . . . Lears has the natural breadth of interests and grasp of multiple genres that marks a truly accomplished historian. He’s particularly good at drawing together details that reveal the complexities and contradictions of actual political and economic turmoil. . . . Lears’ convincing new narrative of this pivotal half century never falters.” - Tim Rutten, The Los Angeles Times

“Jackson Lears is a formidable, compellingly original cultural and intellectual historian. . . . Rebirth of a Nation is Lears’ most ambitious work yet, and it builds brilliantly on his earlier projects. . . . Lears’ convincing new narrative of this pivotal half century never falters.” - Tim Rutten, The Los Angeles Times

“High-concept cultural history at its provocative best. Lears is a polymath and Big Thinker.” - American History

“A remarkable book. . . . As Jackson Lears demonstrates again, he is one of the best of his (and my) generation of historians.” - David Nasaw, The American Prospect

“A fascinating cultural history. . . .A major work by a leading historian at the top of his game—at once engaging and tightly argued. Like the best histories, it is also a book that speaks to our own time.” - The New York Times Book Review

“Jackson Lears, America’s premier cultural historian, has written the smartest and most illuminating survey of this roaring, perplexing era since Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform.” - Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan and professor of history, Georgetown University

“In Rebirth of a Nation, Jackson Lears, our most stimulating historian of American culture, outdoes himself, offering a stunning interpretive synthesis on politics, culture, and social upheaval in the pivotal half-century when ideals of regeneration assumed their modern shape, sometimes as imperial bombast, sometimes as designs for reform.” - Todd Gitlin

“Jackson Lears is one of the few pre-eminent historians of our time. As we dream for a rebirth of America in the age of Obama, this magnificent and magisterial book on the making of modern America could not be more timely. Don’t miss it!” - Cornel West

“In this sweeping and charged history, Jackson Lears brilliantly evokes a defining era in American history. He recasts what we have blandly called the ‘Gilded Age,’ revealing a time of profound change, sharp conflict, and enduring consequence.” - Edward L. Ayers, University of Richmond

“Dazzling cultural history: smart, provocative, and gripping. It is also a book for our times, historically grounded, hopeful, and filled with humane, just, and peaceful possibilities. Lears, with keen insight, refashions even our best known stories. . . . Lears’s history also sheds light on our recent financial meltdown. He provides a fine account of the post-Civil War cult of money. . . . Rebirth of a Nation is packed with historical truth-telling about America’s destructive myths, delusions and fantasies. But it is also a history of dissent, of the men and women who pushed back against the prevailing culture. . . . Lears is at his inspired best when he discusses the anti-imperialist intellectuals such as Mark Twain, Jane Addams, and William James.” - Charles Postel, The Washington Post

“Fascinating. . . . Lears vividly recounts the rise of populism and its more sophisticated relative, progressivism. . . . Peppered with lively language, Rebirth of a Nation warrants close reading around this observance of the Declaration of Independence.” - The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A fascinating cultural history. . . .With Rebirth of a Nation, Lears, one of the deans of American cultural history, expands his vision to include politics, war, and the presidency as well. . . . A major work by a leading historian at the top of his game—at once engaging and tightly argued. Like the best histories, it is also a book that speaks to our own time.” - The New York Times Book Review