"For much of the last century, three narratives framed American history. The plantation narrative, with its Gone-with-the-Wind view of slavery and Reconstruction, bolstered racial apartheid. The frontier narrative worshipped individualism over collectiveresponsibility and ignored the decimation of indigenous cultures. The industrial narrative, redefined by Ralph Brauer in this sweeping history of late-nineteenth-century labor and farmer activism, traditionally celebrated laissez-faire capitalism and theachievements of wealthy industrialists. The Age of Discontent offers an alternative perspective, asserting that the largest and most important expression of mass democracy in American history laid the foundations for economic growth and prosperity. Main Street, not Wall Street, was responsible for the American Century. Grassroots activists and reformers from the working and farming classes take center stage in this fascinating success story of government programs and legislation"--
This revisionist view of late-nineteenth-century history credits Main Street, not Wall Street, with laying the foundations of modern America
In American history, the prevailing narratives of the tumultuous late-nineteenth century focus on wealthy individuals and tycoons while downplaying the very high social and economic stresses they caused.
The Age of Discontent reveals that it was not the tycoons, but rather the laborers and farmers, who in a great uprising of popular democracy reinvented the nation for the emerging industrial world never imagined by the Founders. Facing conditions far worse than previously documented, they overcame the frayed social safety net and violent opposition to pull off what the labor leader John Mitchell has described as the "Second Emancipation," which addressed a dangerously tilted playing field with government programs and legislation. Based on meticulous primary source research and integrating music, photographs, artworks, and statistical data, this sweeping history places grassroots activists and reformersmany recognized for the first timeat center stage in a fascinating success story of perseverance and commitment.
