What do you think?
Rate this book
The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s
Examining the 1890s in terms of a reckless end-of-the-century period not unlike the present one, a detailed study covers such events as the Spanish-American War; the rivalry between Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller; and economic upheavel
375 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
14 people are currently reading
489 people want to read
About the author
H.W. Brands
103 books1,176 followersH.W. Brands is an acclaimed American historian and author of over thirty books on U.S. history, including Pulitzer Prize finalists The First American and Traitor to His Class. He holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his PhD. Originally trained in mathematics, Brands turned to history as a way to pursue his passion for writing. His biographical works on figures like Franklin, Jackson, Grant, and both Roosevelts have earned critical and popular praise for their readability and depth. Raised in Oregon and educated at Stanford, Reed College, and Portland State, he began his teaching career in high schools before entering academia. He later taught at Texas A&M and Vanderbilt before returning to UT Austin. Brands challenges conventional reverence for the Founding Fathers, advocating for a more progressive and evolving view of American democracy. In addition to academic works, his commentary has featured in major documentaries. His books, published internationally and translated into multiple languages, examine U.S. political, economic, and cultural development with compelling narrative force. Beyond academia, he is a public intellectual contributing to national conversations on history and governance.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
December 5, 2009
This author has a great ability to bring cause and effect into light in a clear, down to earth manner that makes reading history not only enjoyable but also leaves you with clear understanding in a way no text book does. I haven't come across a book by this author that I didn't like. I also highly recommend his California gold rush book.
April 1, 2015
"Americans" in the 1980s might've been a better subtitle - as in portraits of rich, powerful, famous men of the 1890s. While this approach allowed some insight into the culture as a whole - a chapter on Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan sketched the impacts of industrialization, and a comparison of Booker Washington to W.E.B. DuBois opened a window into race relations - the book, though solid and well-researched, is well-suited to those who like reading about influential men, not those looking for an overall impression of American society of the time.
October 2, 2021
A good but not great recounting of the United States on the cusp of world power. Brands relies a bit too much on the great man theory of history. For instance, the lives of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan are supposed to suffice to discuss the rise of the great trusts of that time. Much of the story of the decade's enactment of Jim Crow laws in the South must rely on the biographies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. du Bois. At least Brands tells these stories well. Another problem is the author's belief the 1890s offer an invaluable way of understanding the 1990s; however, he fails to prove this thesis while making this book feel a bit too dated for a history book only a quarter of a century old. Three and a half stars.
August 18, 2012
The Restless Decade of H.W. Brands is a book that lives up to its name. Brands takes his readers for a trip although out America in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Brands presents a nation that is on the edge, with the end of century that began with President John Adams and finished with William McKinley; saw the nation grow from the Appalachian Mountains to the Pacific Ocean; split in half and fight; and the saw the end of slavery and the beginning of Jim Crow, the American people were unsure of where they were going. The American frontier was closing and the people were unsure of where in the world they as people belonged and what their national destiny was.
The book begins in what is had been the traditional American story which, in our history, was all too familiar. It was the story of settlers trying to stake their claim to the west by going out and trying to settle a plot of land. But this time honored tradition was coming to a rapid close and the way it was closing was odd. In the past, the government did not hand out land based on organized land races but that was how the frontier was closing in Oklahoma.
Another sign that the frontier had seen its last was the end of armed organized Indian resistance. The Massacre at Wounded Knee, which the events surrounding are very elegantly explained making it easy for the reader to understand the tragic end to the last ounce of Indian resistance and the mysterious ghost dance, ends a long bloody chapter of history dating back to the fifteenth century. With the closing of the frontier and the end of Indian resistance things were changing at a rapid pace.
Brands makes his readers familiar with Frederick Jackson Turner, an academic who grew up on the frontier and who saw its closing as an inevitable disaster for the country. To Turner, the frontier is what had protected the Americans from the corruptions of monarchical Europe. With the frontier disappearing American democracy was going to be headed in a not-so-pleasant direction.
"The frontier had been the fountainhead of American democracy, Turner declared. With each stage in the march of settlement westward, Americans had been required to reinvent government, and this continual reinvention precluded the congealing of a political system in which power begot privilege and privilege monopolized power. 'The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people, to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress, out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier, the complexity of city life.' Where land was abundant and cheap, no one needed to kowtow to land lords or employers. Economic independence begot political independence; democracy was the child of the frontier, the natural consequence of free land." (p.23)
Brands does not stop at the vanishing frontier. He discusses the great industries that were rising up in this time period: oil, transportation, and steel. Brands describes the great industrialists that created these industries. These men were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Although they could be ruthless in their business dealings they were not all bad. Not only did they employ a great many people, but they also were very charitable with their wealth giving mass sums of money for good causes. It is interesting now in modern times where we have the government bailing out big business, back then J.P. Morgan single handily bailed out the Federal government saving it from default.
However, the Industrial Age also produced cities that were a living hell for the inhabitants. Brands quotes from the journalist Jacob Riis who wrote about the condition for the poor and the destitute who were struggling to survive. In addition, the conditions of the cities powered the fuel of the political machines, some of whom had been around since the beginning of the nineteenth century or earlier. The most famous was Tammany Hall, founded by Aaron Burr in end of the previous century. In 1890s, Tammany milked the spoils system to feed itself power, but that was not all, it also provided a huge social need for a great deal of the oppressed.
"'Politics are impossible without the spoils,' Croker answered. 'It is all very well to argue that it ought not to be so. But we have to deal with men as they are and with things as they are. Consider the problem which every democratic system has to solve. Government, we say, of the people, by the people, and for the people. The aim is to interest as many of the citizens as possible in the work--which is not an easy work, and had many difficulties and disappointments--of governing the state or the city. Of course, in an ideal world every citizen would be so dominated by patriotic or civic motives that from sheers unselfish love of his fellow men he would speed nights and days in laboring for their good. If you lived in such a world inhabited by such men, I admit there could be no question but that we could and would dispense with the spoils system. But where is that world to be found? Certainly not in the United States, and most certainly not in New York.'" (p.108)
The Industrial Age created a new idea of employment and unemployment, now with most people working for wages the ability to survive on such wages and the conditions in which they had to work became major issues. Also since the interests large corporations were now very distant from their employees and moved with profits primarily in mind, workers' unions were necessary to get attention to their plight and gain the power to negotiate. Brands talks about both these power struggles and the rise of Eugene Debs.
"Arrests of other A.R.U. Leaders followed, making a continuation of the strike almost impossible. By its liberal--or rather, reactionary--use of the injunction, the government had rendered illegal many acts that formerly had been accepted part of the give and take of labor management relations. Simply by advocating that workers leave their jobs, union officials found themselves liable to criminal prosecution. Some unionist complained that it would have been more straightforward to outlaw strikes altogether--but that would have required approval of Congress, which despite the conservatism in the air wasn't willing to go quite so far. The Cleveland administrations approach had the advantage for conservatives of not requiring the assent of the people's representatives."(p.156)
Race relations took a turn for the worst in this period. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877 rights that African Americans had gained had been steadily chipped away. If the Supreme Court had done its duty when confronted with the problem in Plessy v. Ferguson things could have turned for the better. They did not and the mass injustice of this decision was elegantly stated in Justice Harlan's dissent* in which every word of it came true.
"Although Justice Brown spoke for the court, he didn't speak for all the justices. Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan vehemently disapproved of the court's decision and delivered a blistering rebuke to the majority in a vigorously phrased dissent. Where Brown had contended that the slavery issue was not germane to the Plessy case, Harlan declared that slavery was absolutely germane. The Thirteenth Amendment he said, 'not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude.' To strengthen the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress and the people of the states had approved the Fourteenth Amendment; together, the two amendments 'removed the race line from our governmental systems.' Quoting an earlier decision involving the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, Harlan explained that the Supreme Court declared 'that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the law of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.'" (p.230)
In the African-American community two men competed in the market place of ideas for solutions to the problems facing black men and women for simply being black men and women. One was Booker T. Washington, a former slave, and was W.E.B. Du Bois, an African American intellectual.
"The difference between the two men consisted chiefly in emphasis. For Washington, the training of the masses took priority. Like an army general gathering his infantry for attack, Washington intended to overwhelm the fortifications of the Jim Crow system by an assault across a broad front. For Du Bois, the education of the elite demanded initial attention. 'To attempt to establish any sort of system of common and industrial school training,' he said, 'without first (and I say first advisedly)--without first providing the higher training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds.' Du Bois envisioned the assault on the racial status quo as being spearheaded by commando units of the talented tenth. The commandos would breach the segregationist front by the force of their intelligent gifts of leadership, and they would thereby open the way for the rank and file to follow." (p.250)
Also the election of 1896 was a transformative election that would preview how elections were going to be run in the coming century. The issue of the day was money, and whether to have a gold standard or allow for duel metals with silver coined as well. Brands introduces William Harvey and his alter ego 'Coin' who rallies the populists with the cry of free silver leading to the eventual nomination of William Jennings Bryan. However, popular Bryan may have been, he was to lose to William McKinley, whose agent Mark Hanna was going to redefine the political landscape.
"At the same time, Hanna enlarged the scale of operations of the political manager. In much the same way that the great industrialists secured their markets and broadened their supply bases by expanding into adjacent regions and eventually across the country, so did Hanna. Even as he guided McKinley to election in Ohio, Hanna traveled neighboring states with a message that if Ohio fell to the forces of radicalism, Pennsylvania and Illinois and other states might fall too. In this fashion he forged a network that eventually spanned that nation. The network united, in a more orderly and effective way than before, the financial resources of American big business with the political resources of the Republican Party. It came together in the 1890s partly because of the same kinds of economies of scale and other centralization forces that produced corporate consolidation under Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, but equally because of the decentralizing forces that were producing the Populist revolt, the great labor strikes of the decade, and the outcry for free silver. The industrial lords and their political allies felt the need to band together against the anarchic tendencies they saw abroad in the land. To achieve their vision of America's future, they had to beat down the forces that wanted to take America's future, they had to beat down the forces that wanted to take America backward into a mythical past."(p.266)
The world changed at an incredibly faced pace in the 1890s, H.W. Brands smooth narrative guides the reader on a journey to a world that is both very familiar at times and others unrecognizable. It is a book I highly recommend. The only real complaint I have is no visuals (photos, political cartoons, political election maps) which I think would have led to a richer experience.
*It is ironic that it was a former slaveholder who had the only sense of justice on that court.
The book begins in what is had been the traditional American story which, in our history, was all too familiar. It was the story of settlers trying to stake their claim to the west by going out and trying to settle a plot of land. But this time honored tradition was coming to a rapid close and the way it was closing was odd. In the past, the government did not hand out land based on organized land races but that was how the frontier was closing in Oklahoma.
Another sign that the frontier had seen its last was the end of armed organized Indian resistance. The Massacre at Wounded Knee, which the events surrounding are very elegantly explained making it easy for the reader to understand the tragic end to the last ounce of Indian resistance and the mysterious ghost dance, ends a long bloody chapter of history dating back to the fifteenth century. With the closing of the frontier and the end of Indian resistance things were changing at a rapid pace.
Brands makes his readers familiar with Frederick Jackson Turner, an academic who grew up on the frontier and who saw its closing as an inevitable disaster for the country. To Turner, the frontier is what had protected the Americans from the corruptions of monarchical Europe. With the frontier disappearing American democracy was going to be headed in a not-so-pleasant direction.
"The frontier had been the fountainhead of American democracy, Turner declared. With each stage in the march of settlement westward, Americans had been required to reinvent government, and this continual reinvention precluded the congealing of a political system in which power begot privilege and privilege monopolized power. 'The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people, to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress, out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier, the complexity of city life.' Where land was abundant and cheap, no one needed to kowtow to land lords or employers. Economic independence begot political independence; democracy was the child of the frontier, the natural consequence of free land." (p.23)
Brands does not stop at the vanishing frontier. He discusses the great industries that were rising up in this time period: oil, transportation, and steel. Brands describes the great industrialists that created these industries. These men were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Although they could be ruthless in their business dealings they were not all bad. Not only did they employ a great many people, but they also were very charitable with their wealth giving mass sums of money for good causes. It is interesting now in modern times where we have the government bailing out big business, back then J.P. Morgan single handily bailed out the Federal government saving it from default.
However, the Industrial Age also produced cities that were a living hell for the inhabitants. Brands quotes from the journalist Jacob Riis who wrote about the condition for the poor and the destitute who were struggling to survive. In addition, the conditions of the cities powered the fuel of the political machines, some of whom had been around since the beginning of the nineteenth century or earlier. The most famous was Tammany Hall, founded by Aaron Burr in end of the previous century. In 1890s, Tammany milked the spoils system to feed itself power, but that was not all, it also provided a huge social need for a great deal of the oppressed.
"'Politics are impossible without the spoils,' Croker answered. 'It is all very well to argue that it ought not to be so. But we have to deal with men as they are and with things as they are. Consider the problem which every democratic system has to solve. Government, we say, of the people, by the people, and for the people. The aim is to interest as many of the citizens as possible in the work--which is not an easy work, and had many difficulties and disappointments--of governing the state or the city. Of course, in an ideal world every citizen would be so dominated by patriotic or civic motives that from sheers unselfish love of his fellow men he would speed nights and days in laboring for their good. If you lived in such a world inhabited by such men, I admit there could be no question but that we could and would dispense with the spoils system. But where is that world to be found? Certainly not in the United States, and most certainly not in New York.'" (p.108)
The Industrial Age created a new idea of employment and unemployment, now with most people working for wages the ability to survive on such wages and the conditions in which they had to work became major issues. Also since the interests large corporations were now very distant from their employees and moved with profits primarily in mind, workers' unions were necessary to get attention to their plight and gain the power to negotiate. Brands talks about both these power struggles and the rise of Eugene Debs.
"Arrests of other A.R.U. Leaders followed, making a continuation of the strike almost impossible. By its liberal--or rather, reactionary--use of the injunction, the government had rendered illegal many acts that formerly had been accepted part of the give and take of labor management relations. Simply by advocating that workers leave their jobs, union officials found themselves liable to criminal prosecution. Some unionist complained that it would have been more straightforward to outlaw strikes altogether--but that would have required approval of Congress, which despite the conservatism in the air wasn't willing to go quite so far. The Cleveland administrations approach had the advantage for conservatives of not requiring the assent of the people's representatives."(p.156)
Race relations took a turn for the worst in this period. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877 rights that African Americans had gained had been steadily chipped away. If the Supreme Court had done its duty when confronted with the problem in Plessy v. Ferguson things could have turned for the better. They did not and the mass injustice of this decision was elegantly stated in Justice Harlan's dissent* in which every word of it came true.
"Although Justice Brown spoke for the court, he didn't speak for all the justices. Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan vehemently disapproved of the court's decision and delivered a blistering rebuke to the majority in a vigorously phrased dissent. Where Brown had contended that the slavery issue was not germane to the Plessy case, Harlan declared that slavery was absolutely germane. The Thirteenth Amendment he said, 'not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude.' To strengthen the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress and the people of the states had approved the Fourteenth Amendment; together, the two amendments 'removed the race line from our governmental systems.' Quoting an earlier decision involving the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, Harlan explained that the Supreme Court declared 'that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the law of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.'" (p.230)
In the African-American community two men competed in the market place of ideas for solutions to the problems facing black men and women for simply being black men and women. One was Booker T. Washington, a former slave, and was W.E.B. Du Bois, an African American intellectual.
"The difference between the two men consisted chiefly in emphasis. For Washington, the training of the masses took priority. Like an army general gathering his infantry for attack, Washington intended to overwhelm the fortifications of the Jim Crow system by an assault across a broad front. For Du Bois, the education of the elite demanded initial attention. 'To attempt to establish any sort of system of common and industrial school training,' he said, 'without first (and I say first advisedly)--without first providing the higher training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds.' Du Bois envisioned the assault on the racial status quo as being spearheaded by commando units of the talented tenth. The commandos would breach the segregationist front by the force of their intelligent gifts of leadership, and they would thereby open the way for the rank and file to follow." (p.250)
Also the election of 1896 was a transformative election that would preview how elections were going to be run in the coming century. The issue of the day was money, and whether to have a gold standard or allow for duel metals with silver coined as well. Brands introduces William Harvey and his alter ego 'Coin' who rallies the populists with the cry of free silver leading to the eventual nomination of William Jennings Bryan. However, popular Bryan may have been, he was to lose to William McKinley, whose agent Mark Hanna was going to redefine the political landscape.
"At the same time, Hanna enlarged the scale of operations of the political manager. In much the same way that the great industrialists secured their markets and broadened their supply bases by expanding into adjacent regions and eventually across the country, so did Hanna. Even as he guided McKinley to election in Ohio, Hanna traveled neighboring states with a message that if Ohio fell to the forces of radicalism, Pennsylvania and Illinois and other states might fall too. In this fashion he forged a network that eventually spanned that nation. The network united, in a more orderly and effective way than before, the financial resources of American big business with the political resources of the Republican Party. It came together in the 1890s partly because of the same kinds of economies of scale and other centralization forces that produced corporate consolidation under Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, but equally because of the decentralizing forces that were producing the Populist revolt, the great labor strikes of the decade, and the outcry for free silver. The industrial lords and their political allies felt the need to band together against the anarchic tendencies they saw abroad in the land. To achieve their vision of America's future, they had to beat down the forces that wanted to take America's future, they had to beat down the forces that wanted to take America backward into a mythical past."(p.266)
The world changed at an incredibly faced pace in the 1890s, H.W. Brands smooth narrative guides the reader on a journey to a world that is both very familiar at times and others unrecognizable. It is a book I highly recommend. The only real complaint I have is no visuals (photos, political cartoons, political election maps) which I think would have led to a richer experience.
*It is ironic that it was a former slaveholder who had the only sense of justice on that court.
March 7, 2018
There are many ways in which a book can be critiqued. Is it written well? Are there factual errors? Does it offer anything insightful? In the case of The Reckless Decade by H.W. Brands, which clearly sets out its purpose, does it achieve its purpose? To reiterate, The Reckless Decade attempts to answer the questions of the 1990s by looking back upon the 1890s. This would entail comparison of the two decades in addition to an overview of the 1890s as that is the frame in which Brands is using to answer those questions. Thus, one would expect his book to be a solid overview of the 1890s. Keeping this in mind, the book will be critiqued on its merits of being a solid piece of history on the 1890s, and a solid covering of it. The book under this lens suffers critically due to its reliance on “great man history”, and extraneous anecdotes.
The Great Man Theory of history arises out of the 19th century which is based on the premise that history is the collection of great men throughout time. This theory has later been discredited by other historians for ignoring the material conditions which form influential figures, and for the erasure of people who are not seen as major figures. Overall it is seen as reducing history to nothing more than a collection of biographies. History being taken as a collection is biographies is exemplified by The Reckless Decade. Brands writes history almost as a story with a cast of characters rather than analysing events and trends. Almost every section of the book tackles aspects of the 1890s through the lens of some figure. Since this is done throughout the book, it would be disruptive to mention every instance of this in the book. Rather, sample of these cases can be looked at. Chapter 2: “In Morgan We Trust” is almost entirely dependent upon its focus on famous figures for describing the rise of big business. At its start, the chapter focuses on the “battle of the currents” between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse as the central players in the technological revolution of the time. Then heading into the meat of the chapter to discuss the actual prominence of big businesses, Brands decides to focus on these leaders of industry over the conditions in which they arose. It tells the life stories of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan under the narrative of focusing on their personal accomplishments rather than the reasons for the shift in the economy to favor these types of figures. As a result, the reader doesn’t learn much of value about the time, but rather just learns of the accomplishments of people long dead. If Brands is attempting to compare the 1890s to the 1990s, it is hard to make these comparisons through biographies over actual history of that decade as a whole. This same criticism applies to when the labor movement is depicted almost only through the lens of its leadership, or when the issues of African Americans at the time are put in the backburner to give an almost full biography of Booker T. Washington’s life. At no point does Brands ever really discuss why there was this heated conflict between capital and labor at the time, nor does he discuss the issues of African Americans besides the emergence of Jim Crow laws. This weakens the book as a whole as the information it holds becomes less valuable. There’s almost nothing to be taken away from a collection of biographies for further thought, nor does it accurately represent an era as a whole. Imagine trying to conceptualize contemporary society only through celebrities, and politicians compared to hard sociological, economical, &c. analysis.
Beyond the use of “Great Man Theory”, the covering of the 1890s is hampered by the priorities that H.W. Brands seems to have. When discussing a topic, Brands has a tendency to focus too much on specific events rather than the larger picture. Whereas the use of “Great Man Theory” turns history into nothing more than a collection of biographies, Brands use of anecdotes and narration turns history into nothing more than a collection of stories. Chapter 4: “Blood on the Water” serves as the best example of this. Rather than discuss the larger issues of labor, and the movement as a whole, Brands instead focuses on two specific strikes with analysis of the two being brief compared to their summaries. Eleven pages are spent going in detail describing the Homestead Strike of 1892. Eleven pages are spent going into detail of auxiliary details such as the various ways the strikers attempted to get rid of Pinkerton agents. Meanwhile, only four pages are spent discussing the aftermath of the Strike, and even then without much explanation of its larger significance. Then the next fifteen pages are spent on the Pullman Strike of 1894 and its aftermath. While this is a major strike and Eugene Debs is a important figure, there’s absolutely no placing of the events into the larger picture. The main takeaways are the anti-labor stances of the government, and Debs’s transition into a socialist. Beyond that, there is no analysis at all. The last section of the chapter is focused on Coxey’s Army’s walk on Washington. Much ink is spilt on the exciting anecdotes of this story, but with little none spent on the details surrounding it. There is almost no detailing on why the movement of Coxey arose, or what it accomplished. While there is some faint answers in the epilogue, it is nothing more than a brief mentioning of its legacy. Beyond this specific chapter, a singular anecdote mentioned previously stands out as one of the most egregious examples of something so unremarkable or important in this book. When discussing the Cleveland administration’s collaboration with J.P. Morgan, Brands goes on an entire section side-tangent to discuss a scandal involving Grover Cleveland that even the author admits didn’t affect him that much, and is a “sidebar” to the main discussion at hand. There is nothing relevant to the book as a whole at all about this tangent. One might guess its supposed to be a parallel to Bill Clinton’s own scandal as to be a comparison to the 1990s, but keep in mind that The Reckless Decade was published in 1995, and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal first broke in 1998. While an extreme example, it nonetheless shows a running problem throughout Brands’ text. Most of the book is spent on these stories, over any analysis or critical thought of the decade as a whole.
If the purpose of The Reckless Decade is to examine the issues that come with the ending of a century by reexamining the 1890s, then H.W. Brands’ fails on delivering a satisfactory analysis of the past. There is nothing new Brands adds to the historical conversation with the past. There is barely any historical analysis of any sort, but rather in its place is the regurgitation of biographies and narratives. While something such as this may be more acceptable in a textbook, The Reckless Decade is its own text and clearly states its purpose. Brands most definitely writes his book with a thesis, but there is not sufficient analysis of the information he provides to back up his thesis. H.W. Brands spends practically no time achieving his purpose of comparing the 1890s to the 1990s, outside of the prologue and the epilogue. Since Brands spends too much of the main contents of the book without analysis, he is forced to cram short and shallow analysis at the bookends. In the end, while The Reckless Decade may be accurate in its information, it does absolutely nothing with it.
The Great Man Theory of history arises out of the 19th century which is based on the premise that history is the collection of great men throughout time. This theory has later been discredited by other historians for ignoring the material conditions which form influential figures, and for the erasure of people who are not seen as major figures. Overall it is seen as reducing history to nothing more than a collection of biographies. History being taken as a collection is biographies is exemplified by The Reckless Decade. Brands writes history almost as a story with a cast of characters rather than analysing events and trends. Almost every section of the book tackles aspects of the 1890s through the lens of some figure. Since this is done throughout the book, it would be disruptive to mention every instance of this in the book. Rather, sample of these cases can be looked at. Chapter 2: “In Morgan We Trust” is almost entirely dependent upon its focus on famous figures for describing the rise of big business. At its start, the chapter focuses on the “battle of the currents” between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse as the central players in the technological revolution of the time. Then heading into the meat of the chapter to discuss the actual prominence of big businesses, Brands decides to focus on these leaders of industry over the conditions in which they arose. It tells the life stories of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan under the narrative of focusing on their personal accomplishments rather than the reasons for the shift in the economy to favor these types of figures. As a result, the reader doesn’t learn much of value about the time, but rather just learns of the accomplishments of people long dead. If Brands is attempting to compare the 1890s to the 1990s, it is hard to make these comparisons through biographies over actual history of that decade as a whole. This same criticism applies to when the labor movement is depicted almost only through the lens of its leadership, or when the issues of African Americans at the time are put in the backburner to give an almost full biography of Booker T. Washington’s life. At no point does Brands ever really discuss why there was this heated conflict between capital and labor at the time, nor does he discuss the issues of African Americans besides the emergence of Jim Crow laws. This weakens the book as a whole as the information it holds becomes less valuable. There’s almost nothing to be taken away from a collection of biographies for further thought, nor does it accurately represent an era as a whole. Imagine trying to conceptualize contemporary society only through celebrities, and politicians compared to hard sociological, economical, &c. analysis.
Beyond the use of “Great Man Theory”, the covering of the 1890s is hampered by the priorities that H.W. Brands seems to have. When discussing a topic, Brands has a tendency to focus too much on specific events rather than the larger picture. Whereas the use of “Great Man Theory” turns history into nothing more than a collection of biographies, Brands use of anecdotes and narration turns history into nothing more than a collection of stories. Chapter 4: “Blood on the Water” serves as the best example of this. Rather than discuss the larger issues of labor, and the movement as a whole, Brands instead focuses on two specific strikes with analysis of the two being brief compared to their summaries. Eleven pages are spent going in detail describing the Homestead Strike of 1892. Eleven pages are spent going into detail of auxiliary details such as the various ways the strikers attempted to get rid of Pinkerton agents. Meanwhile, only four pages are spent discussing the aftermath of the Strike, and even then without much explanation of its larger significance. Then the next fifteen pages are spent on the Pullman Strike of 1894 and its aftermath. While this is a major strike and Eugene Debs is a important figure, there’s absolutely no placing of the events into the larger picture. The main takeaways are the anti-labor stances of the government, and Debs’s transition into a socialist. Beyond that, there is no analysis at all. The last section of the chapter is focused on Coxey’s Army’s walk on Washington. Much ink is spilt on the exciting anecdotes of this story, but with little none spent on the details surrounding it. There is almost no detailing on why the movement of Coxey arose, or what it accomplished. While there is some faint answers in the epilogue, it is nothing more than a brief mentioning of its legacy. Beyond this specific chapter, a singular anecdote mentioned previously stands out as one of the most egregious examples of something so unremarkable or important in this book. When discussing the Cleveland administration’s collaboration with J.P. Morgan, Brands goes on an entire section side-tangent to discuss a scandal involving Grover Cleveland that even the author admits didn’t affect him that much, and is a “sidebar” to the main discussion at hand. There is nothing relevant to the book as a whole at all about this tangent. One might guess its supposed to be a parallel to Bill Clinton’s own scandal as to be a comparison to the 1990s, but keep in mind that The Reckless Decade was published in 1995, and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal first broke in 1998. While an extreme example, it nonetheless shows a running problem throughout Brands’ text. Most of the book is spent on these stories, over any analysis or critical thought of the decade as a whole.
If the purpose of The Reckless Decade is to examine the issues that come with the ending of a century by reexamining the 1890s, then H.W. Brands’ fails on delivering a satisfactory analysis of the past. There is nothing new Brands adds to the historical conversation with the past. There is barely any historical analysis of any sort, but rather in its place is the regurgitation of biographies and narratives. While something such as this may be more acceptable in a textbook, The Reckless Decade is its own text and clearly states its purpose. Brands most definitely writes his book with a thesis, but there is not sufficient analysis of the information he provides to back up his thesis. H.W. Brands spends practically no time achieving his purpose of comparing the 1890s to the 1990s, outside of the prologue and the epilogue. Since Brands spends too much of the main contents of the book without analysis, he is forced to cram short and shallow analysis at the bookends. In the end, while The Reckless Decade may be accurate in its information, it does absolutely nothing with it.
Read
July 24, 2024I read this for research on the texture of life for 1890's Americans, and although there were a few new bits of information I learned here and there, this book felt rather hollow in many parts. Brands doesn't really have a strong thesis here (he basically claims that the 1890's and 1990's are assailed by the same social and political forces, which, reductivity aside, really dates this book), made even worse by the fact that he makes little effort to synthesize his research into anything fresh or exciting.This book basically reads like a "greatest hits" of lessons from the Progressive Era unit of your high school history class, a feeling compounded by the ragtag structure. A better sense of chronology likely would have helped things out. Instead, the book is organized by topic - robber barons, unions, racial segregation, imperialism, and political movements, to name a few - which only succeeds in making each chapter feeling less like a sweeping overview of the era and more like a collection of non-fiction short stories with dry prose (an entire section is devoted almost entirely to HP Morgan's huge nose???). I appreciate Brands' extensive use of primary sources, but this has the unfortunate side effect of placing undue emphasis on certain figures, who, in the longue dureé, really don't matter all that much. The good news is, the middle section of the book is a pretty solid narrative of labor in the late 19th century. I'd recommend reading at least those chapters.
December 5, 2018
I found this history book very readable. The author provides sufficient details on individuals & events so you understand the issues involved but not so much detail that the narrative gets bogged down or you lose interest. It was interesting for me as a reader to recocognize similarities between the 1890s and today in the early 21st Century. In the final chapter, the author summarizes the trends he discovered in his study that show history repeating itself during the past 100+ years, what continues to be unresolved, and what has changed.
August 30, 2024
Low five stars. I would also be okay with four stars given that some sections were just okay (though they were a minority), but that last star came through for me because the decade ended with the Philippine occupation. I am partial with these chronological cross-section tales, especially if the interesting stories are covered, and the stories here are indeed noteworthy. Economics, politics, and foreign policy are staples, but the social and racial aspects were notable too. Good stuff.
August 26, 2017
Finally picked this back up to finish. This is one of my favorite periods of American history, so the issue for me is reading much of the content previously. And also in often in biographical forms. Brands writing is dryer history, feeling like it's being taught from above thru the recoded lives of the tycoons, Presidents and warriors. Just doesn't measure up well for me
March 8, 2020
Very informative, but a little laborious at times. It would have benefitted from photos and the lack of foot notes greatly diminished its use as a research source. Also some sections over-relied on large quotes from other sources that went on for multiple pages (such as George Washinton Plunkitt). I'd have preferred smaller quotes and more interpretation by Brands
April 19, 2022
I enjoyed the book but I would have changed the order of the chapters. I put the book down a few times because of my lack of interest in the subject matter of the first chapter. Nevertheless after finally making my way through the first chapter, the book focused on many of the other politcal and social issues of the day. It provided a good brief summary/review of those issues.
May 20, 2019
Brands is an excellent writer and has written many good books. The Reckless Decade however fell short. There were some high points but also many low areas which I didn’t feel were that important. Still, Brands is one my favorite authors and I will continue to read his other books.
June 11, 2024
The focus of my research these days is on America as it was in the years between the Civil War and WW1. This book looks at the events and thinking as it existed in the 1890s. Thorough research, laid out in an accessible writing style.
October 4, 2019
Excellent book to help with my worldbuilding for my own novel. It touches on wider themes and individual stories well.
November 11, 2012
One of Brands' earlier books (written in 1995) and perhaps it shows as it isn't on par with some of his more recent books which are consistently fascinating and informative. This one tries to cover the important events of the 1890s which seems simple enough. Yet, as Brands shows, the 1890s brought to America widespread social, political, and economic changes, and in that regard I feel this book could have been more effective if it had concentrated on just one of those three main aspects.
Brands, who is a great economics and political historian, probably succeeded in this book more efficiently when focusing on the captains of industry during the last decade of the Gilded Age, or when profiling successful and unsuccessful candidates for President like William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Debs. But the chapters on the Spanish American War and Philippines and other imperialistic objectives as well as material on W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington aren't as detailed.
I'll take a lesser Brands effort over most other history books any day, but this isn't the one I'd suggest most new readers start with.
Brands, who is a great economics and political historian, probably succeeded in this book more efficiently when focusing on the captains of industry during the last decade of the Gilded Age, or when profiling successful and unsuccessful candidates for President like William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Debs. But the chapters on the Spanish American War and Philippines and other imperialistic objectives as well as material on W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington aren't as detailed.
I'll take a lesser Brands effort over most other history books any day, but this isn't the one I'd suggest most new readers start with.
Read
July 7, 2011A very perceptive book that points out how much the 1890's and our times are the same. A growing social divide between the very rich and the poor. Growing control that large businesses have over our government, aggressive foreign policy and a depression that required a bail out of the government by Wall Street mirrors our times in many ways.
February 3, 2017
I don't normally like nonfiction, but this is told in such a way that you don't get too bogged down in the details. I actually learned something too.
August 4, 2016
One of Mr Brands' earliest books, well written in his story-telling fashion. Interesting presentation to draw parallels between 1890s and 1990s. Crisp analysis, minor bias but mostly even handed, captures and illuminates era. 4 stars.
May 17, 2009
The 1890s and the 1990s in the USA had more in common than one might first expect, after 100 years the country in 1990 was working out many of the same issues it was in 1890.
September 22, 2009
Good intro to economic, political, social, cultural issues of the decade written in a very engaging style.
April 30, 2016
The book is helpful to know more about American during the 1890s in details including the economic, the financial, the political, and the social changes.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews