Revising The Response to Industrialism: Changes in Perspective over Forty Years, 1955–1995

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Samuel P. Hays
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
American History ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Chicago Press ◽  
The Way

When I retired in 1991 my first project was to revise The Response to Industrialism, which covered the years from 1877 to 1914. These, of course, are the years we call the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. When the University of Chicago Press asked if I would undertake a revision as part of their desire to update several books in the History of American Civilization Series, I readily agreed. I did so with some instinctive understanding that much about the book would undergo revision, but just what I did not have clearly in mind. Much had changed in the profession, and much had changed in the way I thought about that period in American history. As I worked my way through the first edition the details of those changes became more clear. And so I prepared an introduction to the revision that outlined for the reader just what had changed in my thinking over those forty years.

Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920. By Thomas Winter. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. vii, 208. $40.00, cloth; $17.00, paper.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 279-280
Author(s):  
John Enyeart
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Class Difference ◽  
Christian Fellowship ◽  
The University ◽  
Fundamental Shift ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

To comprehend how republican Victorians in the Gilded Age became liberal moderns in the Progressive Era we must grasp the tensions between gender and class in shaping identity. Thomas Winter in Making Men, Making Class aids in our understanding of this fundamental shift by providing a study of the middle-class men who ran the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). YMCA secretaries, Winter argues, attempted “to transcend class lines and unite men on the basis of manhood [which] ultimately led them to articulate new definitions of manhood structured by class difference” (p. 7). Making Men is the story of YMCA leaders' desire to quell working-class radicalism by promoting an idea of manhood rooted in hard work, loyalty to employers, and Christian fellowship.

John W. Boyer, The University of Chicago: A History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 676pp. ISBN: 9780226242514

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger L. Geiger
Keyword(s):  
Higher Learning ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Democratic Institution ◽  
American Universities ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

This chapter reviews the book The University of Chicago: A History (2015), by John W. Boyer. Founded in 1892, the University of Chicago is one of the world’s great institutions of higher learning. However, its past is also littered with myths, especially locally. Furthermore, the university has in significant ways been out of sync with the trends that have shaped other American universities. These issues and much else are examined by Boyer in the first modern history of the University of Chicago. Aside from rectifying myth, Boyer places the university in the broader history of American universities. He suggests that the early University of Chicago, in its combination of openness and quality, may have been the most democratic institution in American higher education. He also examines the reforms that overcame the chronic weaknesses that had plagued the university.

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