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The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915
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Author:
Jon Grinspan
Publisher:
Bloomsbury Publishing
Date:
April 27, 2021
A history of American democracy at its wildest and a new rethinking of the relationship between the people and their politics.
What The Reviewers Say
It’s not every day — it’s not every year — that a book appears that upends all the guiding historical views of the age. Then again, Jon Grinspan’s The Age of Acrimony is that rare disturbance in the waters of the historiography of 19th-century America. It is an engaging, inviting, and ultimately disruptive story of what happened between the assassination of Lincoln and the sinking of the Lusitania, though neither really serves as a bookend to Grinspan’s argument.
... isn’t a detailed narrative of the era’s political struggles or a political-science thesis with tables and graphs. The wondrous profusion of technological innovation and economic growth of the late 19th century is touched on, but without the robotic denunciations of 'robber barons' that permeate so many historians’ accounts. Mr. Grinspan’s focus is on practical politics, which in this period meant mass politics—the highest rates of voter turnout and mass participation in the nation‘s history..
... brisk, edifying.
This turbulent time in American politics is expertly captured by historian Grinspan.
