{"product_id":"crusader-nationisbn-9780375724657","title":"Crusader Nation","description":"In this absorbing history of progressive-era America, acclaimed historian David Traxel paints a vivid picture of a tumultuous time of change that was the foundation for the twentieth century.. With WWI on the horizon, the struggles to end child labor, improve public health, advance education, win votes for women, and rid cities of corrupt political machines brought forth passionate responses from millions of Americans. There was a demand for reform and a desire for a more efficient and compassionate society. From wide-eyed dreamers to hard-line politicians, seasoned reporters to diary keeping soldiers, these crusaders–Jack Reed, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, and “Mother” Jones to name a few–come alive in these pages.“Beautifully written–a book that will make all Americans take heart.”–Doris Kearns Goodwin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Incisive. . . . Copiously referenced. . . . Brings to life the people and events that cast the foundation of America’s path in the last century.” –\u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia Inquirer\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Highly readable. . . . filled with vivid anecdotes [that bring] the period into much sharper focus.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Providence Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Engagingly written and insightful. . . . [Traxel’s narrative ] is greatly enhanced by his extensive use of the diaries of average Americans.”–\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eVictorian David Traxel is the author of \u003ci\u003e1898: The Birth of the American Century\u003c\/i\u003e. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and is an associate professor of history at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife, the photographer Rosemary Ranck.\u003cb\u003e   American Renascence\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e    Looking back . . . I have thought of the period in America, including   the last few years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the   twentieth, as the American Renascence, even the Great American   Renascence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ray Stannard Baker\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    You see, getting down to the bottom of things, this is a pretty raw,   crude civilization of ours—pretty wasteful, pretty cruel, which often   comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? And in a lot of respects we   Americans are the rawest and crudest of all. Our production, our   factory laws, our charities, our relations between capital and labor,   our distribution—all wrong, out of gear. We’ve stumbled along for a   while, trying to run a new civilization in old ways, but we’ve got to   start to make this world over.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Thomas Edison, 1912\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In 1898 the United States stepped into the realm of international power   politics for the first time. The country had already become a global   economic presence, and was feared as a competitor because of its   tremendous natural resources and industrial efficiency. Militarily,   however, it was viewed with condescension by the Great Powers until it   quickly and decisively thrashed Spain in 1898, seizing as the fruits of   victory the colonies remaining in that faded empire: Cuba, which was   soon given a limited independence, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the   Philippines. Mixed into this rather amateurish adventure were motives   of economic gain, national prestige, fear of German or other European   expansion into the Caribbean, desire for strategic naval bases, and   anger over the blowing up of the battleship Maine. But there was also a   strong sense of moral outrage about the way the Spanish had been   mistreating Cuban civilians while suppressing a revolt on the island.   Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children had died in   concentration camps just ninety miles off the American shore, and the   public demanded that an end be put to such horrors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    America was encouraged to take the path to a world role by Great   Britain, looking for allies against the rising and aggressive strength   of Germany. Rudyard Kipling, celebratory poet of the world-circling   British Empire, wrote a widely distributed poem urging Americans to   “Take up the White Man’s burden” of civilizing “sullen peoples, half   devil and half child.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The challenge was taken up, and yet, in this American assumption of   global responsibilities there was a shyness and uncertainty even among   those such as Theodore Roosevelt who urged a “large” policy on the   United States. The country needed to take a more active role in   international affairs, these men believed, if only to protect itself in   a Darwinian world where the strong devoured the weak. China, one of the   countries being picked apart by stronger nations, provided a negative   example for such Americans. The United States could not, argued   Roosevelt’s close friend and political ally Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,   “allow itself to become a hermit nation hiding a defenseless, feeble   body within a huge shell . . .  shut up and kept from its share of the   world’s commerce until it was smothered by a power hostile to it in   every conception of justice and liberty.” At the same time, the policy   of extending the country’s reach across the seas invited attack on   these “hostages to fortune,” as Roosevelt recognized by calling the new   Philippine colony “our Achilles’ heel.” A newspaper doggerel writer   spoke for many who were unhappy with imperialism:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We’ve taken up the white man’s burden  of ebony and brown;  Now will you tell us, Rudyard  how we may put it down?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Roosevelt had been the Man of the Year in 1898, and also for the decade   that followed, the ideal spokesman for his generation and a worthy   representative of their ambitions. These were roles for which he was   both born, in 1856, and self-made. His father was a member of a wealthy   old New York “Dutch” family, his mother came from plantation-owning   stock in Georgia, and young “Teedie” had grown up during the Civil War   in a household reflecting the regional differences. He had enjoyed a   childhood replete with all the good things money could buy, but marred   by ill health and poor eyesight, his own weak body making him   defenseless against bullies until he overcame these physical   disabilities through exercise and will. Some of that exercise had come   from long expeditions running through Long Island fields and woods with   butterfly net and rifle to collect natural-history specimens, and some   through steady work with dumbbells and other such instruments of   torture taken up at the urging of his father, who told him, “You have   the mind but not the body, and without the help of the body the mind   cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard   drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.” He did, and   kept doing so all his life. He also worked at making his mind; in   adulthood he could speak three languages besides English with some   facility, and could read seven, while he continued his intense, if   rather bloodstained, study of birds, animals, and nature, and became a   prolific historian and writer as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    After graduating from Harvard and after an early marriage, Roosevelt   entered politics, much to the dismay of friends and family, who   regarded that line of work as appropriate only for saloon keepers,   corrupt hacks, and Irishmen. “I answered that if this were so it merely   meant that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and   that the other people did—and that I intended to be one of the   governing class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I   would have to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had   made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my   own in the rough and tumble.” He more than held his own, serving three   terms in the New York assembly, where he became an important part of   the reform element in the Republican Party. But then both his beloved   wife, Alice, and his mother died within hours of each other on February   14, 1884, and he fled to the frontier West to raise cattle, shoot big   game, and mourn. A few years later, Roosevelt remarried and returned to   politics, running unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, then serving as   U.S. civil service commissioner before winning public attention as the   aggressive president of New York’s police commission. His intelligence,   honesty, and energy had gained him many admiring allies, but his   combative temperament and impatient self-righteousness had also bred   enemies. President Benjamin Harrison observed about his civil service   commissioner that he “wanted to put an end to all the evil in the world   between sunrise and sunset.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It looked for a while as if the firebrand’s career would go no further.   He had campaigned strenuously for William McKinley in the hard-fought   and divisive election of 1896, but, even so, after the victory McKinley   was hesitant to appoint him assistant secretary of the navy. “I want   peace,” the new president told one of Roosevelt’s supporters, “and I am   told that your friend Theodore—whom I know only slightly—is always   getting into rows with everybody. I am afraid he is too pugnacious.”   These doubts were overcome, allowing Roosevelt to perform superbly in   preparing the navy for the war with Spain. As soon as he felt he had   done all he could for that service, he resigned to organize the First   Volunteer Cavalry, popularly known as Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, which   he dashingly led to victory in Cuba.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The young politician had a genius for publicity. He knew how to charm   and manipulate the press, while journalists appreciated his glamour,   outspokenness, and charismatic flair for action. Coming back from the   war as one of the most famous men in the country, he was able to mount   a winning campaign for governor of New York in that fall of 1898. Two   years later, having alienated state Republican bosses with his modest   attempts at regulating business and protecting New York’s natural   resources, he was kicked upstairs to join William McKinley’s ticket as   vice-presidential candidate. They won the election easily against   William Jennings Bryan and Adlai Stevenson, but on September 6, 1901,   McKinley was shot twice in the stomach by an anarchist named Leon   Czolgosz, and died eight days later from the resulting infection.   Theodore Roosevelt became president; at just forty-two years old he was   the youngest before or since to hold that office.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Men and women of the new president’s generation had been waiting   impatiently for their turn at the levers of power. They had grown up   both inspired and burdened by their fathers’ glory, a glory won first   on the battlefields of the Civil War and then enhanced by their own   part in the prodigious growth of the American economy and American   industrial might in the decades after that struggle. But social   disruptions and suffering on the same enormous scale had accompanied   that growth: abject poverty, especially in the burgeoning cities; women   and children working long hours at dangerous tasks; fathers who could   not earn enough even when laboring thirteen- or fourteen-hour days in   mines and factories to support their families. In the middle of the   nineteenth century there had been only a few millionaires; now there   were thousands. Such were the disparities in wealth that while children   went unfed, the rich would spend tens of thousands of dollars on dinner   parties where guests dined off solid-gold plates or, as at one given by   Caroline Astor, would use sterling-silver trowels to dig through heaps   of sand arranged on the table to find buried treasure troves of   diamonds and rubies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sometimes these galas were presented as benefits for the poor. In the   winter of 1896, during the depths of the worst economic depression up   to that time in American history, Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Bradley-Martin,   perturbed by what they were reading in newspapers about the misery of   the unemployed, decided to give a costume ball to help them find work.   Mrs. Bradley-Martin reportedly exclaimed, “It would give such impetus   to trade!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The couple was wealthy enough to enjoy an elaborate mansion in New   York, a town house in London, and a shooting estate in Scotland; a   notable social coup had been achieved in marrying their   sixteen-year-old daughter to an English aristocrat, Lord Craven. Louis   XIV’s glittering eighteenth-century court provided the theme for their   costume ball, and the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria hotel was the chosen   venue, its Grand Ballroom transformed into the Great Hall of Mirrors at   Versailles. Employment was undoubtedly provided for hairdressers,   jewelers, musicians, couturieres, and even some historians of fashion   as the seven hundred guests arrived on February 10, 1897, dressed as   Renaissance, Elizabethan, French, and a few American historical   figures. European royalty were particular favorites, though Anne   Morgan, youngest daughter of the powerful financier J.P., came as   Pocahontas in a beautifully beaded costume reportedly made by “real   Indians.” August Belmont, financier and star of New York society, wore   a full suit of steel armor inlaid with gold that cost him $10,000. Mrs.   Theodore Roosevelt attended, while her husband, police commissioner at   the time, oversaw 250 of New York’s finest as they ensured that   anarchists and other unruly elements did not intrude. The overall   expenses were paid for by the Bradley-Martins, and amounted to a   stunning $369,000. This at a time when the average workman, if he could   find work, earned $500 a year. It is no wonder that just two years   later, in 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen would write about   “conspicuous consumption” in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class,   noting, “To gain and to hold the esteem of men, it is not sufficient   merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in   evidence.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Such a vulgar display, covered in great detail in contemporary   newspapers, called down upon the Bradley-Martins a storm of criticism   from both press and pulpit alike. While there were few public defenders   of the hosts, who ended up fleeing to a more understanding Europe for   refuge, there were certainly those who supported the inequality brought   about by the raw capitalism of the time. Two such were the English   philosopher Herbert Spencer and the American sociologist William Graham   Sumner, who argued that society was just like the wilderness of nature   where Darwinian evolution took place, and that only those who were   strong and adaptable, those who were “fittest,” should survive,   flourish, and grow rich—or at least comfortable. This philosophy of   social Darwinism was used as a scientific basis for arguing against   laws to ameliorate the conditions of poverty or restrain competition.   Any attempt to interfere would be against “natural law.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest of all Americans, wrote that   all “failures which a man makes in his life are due almost always to   some defect in his personality, some weakness of body, or mind, or   character, will, or temperament.” And there were spiritual authorities   who argued that this was the way God wanted the world. Russell H.   Conwell, Baptist minister and founder of Temple University, had an   acclaimed speech, or sermon, entitled “Acres of Diamonds,” that he   recited more than five thousand times in the years at the end of the   nineteenth century. In the course of two hours, he would exhort his   listeners to “get rich, and it is your duty to get rich . . . to make   money honestly is to preach the gospel. . . . If you can honestly   attain unto riches . . . it is your Christian and godly duty to do so.”   Those who suffered poverty deserved their lot. “To sympathize with a   man whom God has punished for his sins, thus to help him when God would   still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong, no doubt about it.”   All should remember that “there is not a poor person in the United   States who has not been made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the   shortcomings of some one else.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But many of Roosevelt’s generation, born around the time of the Civil   War, worried by and feeling guilty over the great contrast between   wealth and poverty that had become so obvious in American cities, were   determined to tame social and economic chaos and restore a sense of   justice to the system. The name usually given to the general movement   to reform and realign American society is progressivism. Though there   were different hopes and expectations, as well as contradictions, in   the various groups called progressive, they all shared the optimistic   belief that society not only could be improved through peaceful,   reasoned action, but might actually be made perfect—though definition   of that perfection varied greatly. This desire to better the world was   also reflected in the arts: in literature, where writers such as   Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair revealed the sordid   side of urban and industrial life; in painting, where Robert Henri’s   “Ashcan” school also depicted factories, grimy allies, and slums; even   in the new art of motion pictures, which joined the fight with films   that exposed the misuse of prison labor or the evils of the white slave   traffic. The reform city government of Cleveland, Ohio, financed a   semidocumentary to raise money for its battle against the diseases of   the slums.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303034507493,"sku":"NP9780375724657","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375724657_06965a62-2dca-41fd-bcf6-25815a2cda64.jpg?v=1730752817","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/crusader-nationisbn-9780375724657","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}