This was a review I had to write for US History my junior year. Have fun.

In The Age of Reform, Richard Hoftstadter examines Populism–as a verbose segue into Progressivism–and in turn half-heartedly uses Progressivism as a contrast to the New Deal. True to its name, The Age of Reform is a book about reform in American politics, covering more the ideologies than the specifics.

Hoftstadter begins by explaining the "Agrarian Myth." He argues that the concept in the American consciousness of a "yeoman farmer" (and the image’s connections to individuality and democracy) is fictitious, and has been since nearly the beginning of the country. Hoftstadter sees this as one of the main causes of Populism: farmers themselves believe in the agrarian myth even as they become, to a greater and greater degree, commercial farmers, and so have a kind of split personality. Their self-image of being a yeoman farmer is what generates the Populist movement, according to Hoftstadter, more than Turner’s Frontier Theory, which he sees as being far less applicable to the situation than others have stated. Hoftstadter sees the farmer in the late 19^th century as grasping for stability after being thrown into the world market by the Communication and Transportation Revolutions.

Hoftstadter’s examination of Populist texts reveals a strong level of paranoia in the movement, as well as an overpowering sense of apocalypse, not to mention several other facets of dubious worth such as nativism and anti-Semitism. Hoftstadter argues well against the idea that with the fall of the Populists came the fall of the farmer–he holds that, far from it, once farmers lost the remnants of their yeoman farmer image, they managed to form extremely effective organizations and become a veritable political force. For that matter, Hoftstadter says, third parties such as Populism gain success through educating the people, not through gaining office.

Populism, in his eyes, fell when it decided to make silver its sole issue, only for the Democrats under Bryan to steal it (while the book is subtitled "From Bryan to F.D.R.," it paradoxically covers very little about either man). Hoftstadter moves on to the next reform movement, Progressivism, which he contrasts with Populism on several counts, most notably its constituents; Populists were farmers and others who attached to the party in hopes of reaching success they had never enjoyed, while Progressivism was made up of the well-off and professionals, and above all the young. According to Hoftstadter, this was largely a result of the alienation and bewilderment of the professional classes as they began to lose respect to industrial tycoons. He goes out of his way to examine the plight of the attorney, who became the plaything of corporations, and to look at the rise of the consumer as a political force.

Muckraking, Hoftstadter explains, was more about selling newspapers and magazines than changing public opinion, and the good they did was, while not accidental, not the main impetus of the writers. He sees in Muckraking the connection between Progressivism and Protestantism: Progressives are internalizing guilt over the corruption they see in America. One of the main Progressive concerns he outlines is that of trusts, and how they required intervention on a federal level, which earlier reformers had opposed, and which Theodore Roosevelt understood required a government that did not side with either the people or big business. Hoftstadter also looks as Progressive attempts at political reform, which proved useless, if not wasteful, in the end, such as primaries for Presidential elections.

As Populism ended with supporting free silver, Progressivism ended with supporting World War I, in Hoftstadter’s eyes, as it opened it up to the backlash which followed the war. According to Hoftstadter, the period between this and the Depression saw next to no reform activity. He argues that when reform did come, in the New Deal, it was in an entirely new form that borrowed somewhat from earlier movements. Hoftstadter makes a strong argument that the New Deal had a much stronger goal than Populism or Progressivism, and that it introduced the idea of giving the federal government positive powers, which aided instead of punished. He spends quite a bit of time explaining how the language and philosophy behind the New Deal differed greatly from Progressivism before ending on the high note that our world is better today thanks to the reforms of the past.

Hoftstadter has, for a scholar, an extremely casual, easy-to-read style. The one flaw is that while this keeps the book from being dense, it leaves most of the chronology of the history up to the reader to learn on his own. He also seems to have a healthy obsession with footnotes, including several pages with more citations and tangential comments than body text. For a Pulitzer-winning work which has been in print for 45 years, there was an abhorrent number of typographical errors. While the Introduction admitted that the New Deal section was a late edition, a more complete study of the period could not have hurt. Overall, though, it proved a surprisingly interesting look at the ideological and psychological forces behind Populism, Progressivism, and the New Deal.