| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 6.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the JGA online. About 376 words from this article are provided below; about 715 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the Journal of the Gilded Age, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Journal of the Gilded Age, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of the Gilded Age (1.1-present).
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Review | Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era, 6.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Premature Requiem: Progressivism in Peace and War

TRAXEL, DAVID. Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898–1920. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. xi + 413 pp. Preface, illustration, notes, index. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 0-375-41078-3.
Progressivism is experiencing a revival. Seemingly dead and buried in the 1970s after Peter Filene wrote its obituary, the historiography of American and Atlantic progressive politics has flourished in the work of Daniel Rodgers, Alan Dawley, Michael McGerr, and many others.¹ This recent historiography has been as rich as any, and David Traxel's Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898–1920, is a welcome addition. Traxel has a knack for quotation and storytelling and demonstrates a keen eye in his descriptions of the whirlwind of change in early-twentieth-century America. But the lack of argumentative and analytical structure, as well as the lack of engagement with the recent historiography of Atlantic progressive politics, is an unfortunate lapse in this study of what Traxel calls America's great crusades.	1
Traxel's previous book is 1898: The Birth of the American Century. His current work begins with that fateful year for American imperial ambition and economic growth. American reformism was born at this time among men and women "who shared the optimistic belief that society not only could be improved through peaceful, reasoned action, but might actually be made perfect—though definition of that perfection varied greatly"(8). Thus, American crusading was an unstable combination of hard-headed politics, good works, reformist zeal, and provincial bombast. In this way, Traxel paints a complex portrait of progressive reform; this is not a story of unabashed success. He touches on the various accomplishments of progressivism: the attempt by Theodore Roosevelt to reign in the trusts; the struggle of labor against aggressive management (particularly the tragedy and destruction of the Ludlow Massacre); the movement for women's suffrage and the battle to change the composition of the nation's public sphere. But he also shows the dark side of progressive reform: the lack of attention to race and Woodrow Wilson's shameful record on segregation; the attack on civil liberties during World War I; and often incompetent interference and meddling in the events of the Mexican revolution.	. . .

There are about 715 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.