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Gilded Age

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A cartoon depicting Charles Guiteau.

Echoes of Rage

Our new age of violence looks a lot like the Gilded Age.
by George Dillard via Looking Through The Past on December 18, 2024
The U.S. flag flies near the Statue of Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.

How Today Is Like the 1890s

The paths the country took out of that earlier crisis offer valuable lessons for what we should do now, and what we should fear.
by Gideon Rose via Council On Foreign Relations on July 16, 2023
Colorful lithograph showing the "Department of Electricity," a building with electrical lights positioned along the water, with a crowd of people entering

Colonizing the Cosmos: Astor’s Electrical Future

John Jacob Astor’s "A Journey in Other Worlds" is a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future.
by Iwan Rhys Morus via The Public Domain Review on September 14, 2022
Scene from from 'The Gilded Age' in which a wealthy white woman and an African American woman walk in the street, with a stagecoach behind them.

The True History Behind HBO's 'The Gilded Age'

Julian Fellowes' new series dramatizes the late 19th-century clash between New York City's old and new monied elite.
by Kimberly A. Hamlin via Smithsonian on January 20, 2022
Black-and-white image of two men behind bar

The Gilded Age In a Glass: From Innovation to Prohibition

Cocktails — the ingredients, the stories, the pageantry — can reveal more than expected about the Gilded Age.
by Zachary Veith via The Gotham Center on December 28, 2021
Cartoon of politicians arguing

The Gilded Age’s Democratic Contradictions

How the late 19th century’s raucous party system gave way to a sedate and exclusionary political culture that erected more and more barriers to participation.
by Eric Foner via The Nation on June 1, 2021
A movie still featuring a close-up of two actors from The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence: How a US Classic Defined Its Era

Cameron Laux looks at how The Age of Innocence – published 100 years ago – marked a pivotal moment in US history.
by Cameron Laux via BBC News on September 23, 2020

What I Assume the Eighteen-Eighties Were Like

Locomotives. Not trains. Locomotives.
by Seth Reiss via The New Yorker on September 12, 2018

Lessons From the Gilded Age

America today has a lot in common with that bygone era of monopolies and gross inequality. But will the country respond similarly?
by Sarah Jones via The New Republic on June 13, 2018

At Gilded Age “Poverty Parties,” the Rich Felt Free

This bad old tradition isn’t quite dead.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on April 20, 2018

From Progress to Poverty: America’s Long Gilded Age

The America that emerged out of the Civil War was meant to be a radically more equal place. What went wrong?
by Steven Hahn via The Nation on April 18, 2018

When the Idea of Home Was Key to American Identity

From log cabins to Gilded Age mansions, how you lived determined where you belonged.
by Richard White via What It Means to Be American on September 11, 2017
William McKinley's presidential inauguration.

A Warning for Democrats From the Gilded Age and the 1896 Election

Effective Republican organizing and intraparty divisions among Democrats solidified GOP political dominance until the 1930s.
by Adam M. Silver via The Conversation on April 22, 2025
Cartoon of well-dressed arm holding a lit match

The Gilded Age Never Ended

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025
Newspapers showcasing the victory of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump
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Close Elections Signal a New Gilded Age

Donald Trump’s 2024 win, echoing the Gilded Age, highlights America’s volatile, close elections, partisan divides, and structural barriers shaping politics.
by Bruce J. Schulman via Made By History on December 13, 2024
he obverse (right) and reverse (left) of the James H. Hyde Medallion, designed by Paul H. Manship, on the Janvier reduction machine.

Tokens of Culture

On the medallic art of the Gilded Age.
by James Panero via The New Criterion on December 12, 2024
Trump holding a table of tariff rates.
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Tariffs Don’t Have to Make Economic Sense to Appeal to Trump Voters

Economists and Democrats dismiss Trump’s tariffs talk at their peril.
by Bruce J. Schulman via Made By History on October 24, 2024
Eugene V. Debs giving a speech on an American flag themed stage.

Did ‘Churchianity’ Sink American Socialism?

A new book blames institutional Protestantism for undermining a vibrant strain of Christian radicalism that swirled through the Gilded Age.
by Heath W. Carter via Commonweal on July 26, 2024
“Scene Representing the Suffering of Animals in a Railroad Stable” in the 1873 annual report of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

How the Civil War Spurred The Animal Welfare Movement

The story of American abolitionists who, after Emancipation, pivoted from antislavery campaigns to animal welfare advocacy.
by Barbara Spindel via The Christian Science Monitor on June 11, 2024
Picture of William Belknap sitting in a chair.
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Mayorkas Almost Became the Second Cabinet Member Impeached. The First Was a Civil War Hero.

Belknap’s downfall was his decision to abuse his authority to appoint “sutlers” or civilian merchants who ran trading posts that served military outposts.
by Melissa August via Made By History on February 6, 2024
President Theodore Roosevelt raising his hat to wave.

The Curse of Bigness

Until more Americans know what happened in periods such as the Gilded Age, they can’t protect themselves from those who abuse history to advance poor policy.
by Amity Shlaes via National Review on July 10, 2023
Zoe Anderson Norris.

Meet Zoe Anderson Norris, the "Nellie Bly You've Never Heard Of"

Norris, who dubbed herself the "Queen of Bohemia," exposed the injustices of post-Gilded Age New York City—by going undercover.
by Ann Lewinson via Hell Gate on February 28, 2023
1877 political cartoon of a skeleton descending on a railroad, reading "the rioters' railroad to ruin."

Strikers, Octopi, and Visible Hands: The Railroad and American Capitalism

The railroad company remains a site for Americans to grapple with key questions about the nature of American capitalism.
by Scott Huffard via Clio and the Contemporary on December 20, 2022
Illustration depicting workmen and firemen dragging a fireman and engineer from a Baltimore freight train during the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad strike.

The Railway Labor Act Allowed Congress to Break the Rail Strike. We Should Get Rid of It.

Congress was able to break the rail strike last week because of a century-old law designed to weaken the disruptive power of unions.
by Nelson Lichtenstein, Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Jacobin on December 7, 2022
Black-and-white illustration of men using several of Thomas Edison's inventions

A Dose of Rational Optimism

"Slouching Towards Utopia" is a rise-and-fall epic—but it is better at depicting the rise than explaining the fall.
by Zachary D. Carter via Dissent on October 7, 2022
“The Marriage of Convenience,” 1883, by William Quiller Orchardson, depicting a bored young woman and an older man at opposite ends of a long dining room table.

How To Lose a Guy in the Gilded Age

Uncovering the resort where rich women sought the elusive right to divorce
by Jennifer Wilson via The New Republic on June 28, 2022
Photograph of Marian Brook, a fictional character in HBO's The Gilded Age

Philanthropy and the Gilded Age

As the HBO series The Gilded Age suggests, charity allowed wealthy women to play a visible role in public life. It was also a site of inter-class animosity.
by Annie Bares via JSTOR Daily on March 9, 2022
Henry James; illustration by James McMullan

Visions of Waste

"The American Scene" is Henry James’s indictment of what Americans had made of their land.
by Peter Brooks via New York Review of Books on March 3, 2022
A crowd gathered around a railroad track at the ceremony marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.

Breaking the Myth About America’s ‘Great’ Railroad Expansion

Historian Richard White on the greed, ineptitude and economic cost behind the transcontinental railroads, and the implications for infrastructure policy today.
by Richard White, Jake Blumgart via Governing on November 18, 2021
Illustration of circus entertainer in a cage with lions and tigers

Joe Exotic Channels the Spirit of America's 19th-Century Tiger Kings

The flamboyant big-cat aficionados of the Gilded Age weren’t strangers to fierce competition, threats and bizarre drama.
by Madeline Steiner via The Conversation on November 18, 2021
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