Review by Choice Review
This work examines the Progressive movement as a regime change in American political history. Drawing heavily on the writings of 19 Progressive publicists and scholars, the author shows how these thinkers supported and stimulated fundamental alterations in political identity and in a diverse range of institutions including universities, churches, corporations, government bureaucracies, public interest groups, and trade unions. He contends that the Progressives succeeded in destroying the hegemony of juridical constitutionalism and locally based political parties and moved the US toward a national vision and communitarian definition of individualism. Much of this movement was implemented by organizations--trade unions, church groups, women's groups--that operated outside of the rigid constitutional definition of government of the past. The author argues that in its later deference to "value free" analysis, liberalism lost the substantive normative foundations that made the Progressive effort intellectually exciting and politically powerful. This is an excellent, thoroughly documented interpretation of how Progressive thought transformed American government and politics. General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty. R. Heineman; Alfred University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
