American Progressivism: A Reader
Pestritto and Atto have pieced together an excellent collection of essays. The progressives—from Wilson and Roosevelt to Addams and Rauschenbush—emerge clearly in this superb set of primary source essays. We can see in these essays the goals of the progressives to circumvent the Constitution and to try to centralize political power in the hands of the few. I do not know of a better collection of essays on the progressives. (Burton W. Folsom, Jr., Hillsdale College)The Progressive era is second in importance only to the Founding itself for a clear understanding of American political ideas and institutions. Many of the deepest debates in contemporary American political life, ranging from the authority of the Constitution, to the role of parties and interest groups, to the proper stance of the United States in world politics, are traceable back to their roots in the Progressive era. Yet we have devoted remarkably little attention to the careful analysis of Progressivism, partly because we have not looked carefully at the documents that defined “Progressivism” and served to promote it. But now, thanks to Pestritto and Atto’s thoughtful and carefully assembled anthology, this defect has been remedied. Every serious student of American politics and history will be in their debt for this excellent collection. (Wilfred M. McClay, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)This documentary collection provides a fresh and incisive analysis of seminal texts of the Progressive movement that have been uncritically accepted as timeless truths by elusive and ever-changing liberal relativists. Pestritto and Atto illuminate the intellectual vacuity of the Progessive project to substitute history for philosophy as the standard of political right in America. (Herman Belz, University of Maryland)