Of the varieties of histories of the welfare state, this is now, by far, the best. It offers both a survey and a powerful, original interpretation. It is the first general book to take the question of gender seriously. -- Linda Gordon, University of Wisconsin, Madison

In this new interpretation of the making of modern America, prize-winning historian Alan Dawley traces the group struggles involved in the nation’s rise to power. Probing the dynamics of social change, he explores tensions between industrial workers and corporate capitalists, Victorian moralists and New Women, native Protestants and Catholic immigrants. Thoughtful analysis and sparkling narrative combine to make this book a major challenge to earlier interpretations of the period.

"Historians have been calling for years for syntheses of the new scholarship of the last generation. Dawley has now provided one… He dusts democracy off and places it back where it belongs, at the center of the story… His argument helps restore balance to our conception of ‘progressivism’ and to our understanding of the larger liberal world of which, he reminds us, democratic impulses were once (and we must hope remain) a vital part." - Times Literary Supplement