| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

James L. Hunt. Marion Butler and American Populism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2003. Pp. xiii, 338. $49.95.

This is an exceptionally well-grounded study of probably the most historically neglected figure in American Populism. James L. Hunt's biography of Marion Butler is based on research from a dozen archival and manuscript sites as well as a comprehensive survey of the agrarian press and the relevant pamphlet literature. The endnotes alone are worth the price of admission. Hunt takes a clearly defined historiographical position—the rejection of cultural studies for what he terms "core-level political analysis" (p. 295, n. 5)—and, in place of the celebratory writings of Populist scholars over the past three decades, he adopts a stance of detachment. He questions the depth of research, basic themes, and interpretation found in Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (1976) and the subsequent historical literature influenced by its premises of authentic and ersatz Populism. He exorcises the demonological school of Populist scholarship, and puts in its place the discussion of a complex reality in which political circumstances at the state and local levels often shaped the particular strategies for implementing the movement's ideas and goals. His emphasis is on the Populists' effort to translate reform principles into law; he sees, particularly in Butler's case, a sharpened focus on economic issues and the structure and organization necessary to programatic achievements.

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