This volume argues that Midwestern Populists were radical reformers who responded to industrialization in a progressive manner. The author's study is a response to previous Populist histories that portrayed the movement as being opposed to industrialization. In presenting his case, the author relied on a number of primary sources, including manuscript collections of those involved in multiple levels of the movement and Populist newspapers. The author argues that Populists wanted to redefine the relationship between man and industrialization so that the masses, and not the select elite, could benefit. Populists viewed industrialization as neutral, and that it only became a negative influence when capitalists exploited the technology at the cost of human dignity.

A major reinterpretation of the Populist movement, this text argues that the Populists were modern people, rejecting the notion that Populism opposed modernity and progress.

Populist Revolt was first published in 1931. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. When The Populist Revolt was originally published, the New York Times critic called it "far and away the best account of populism that we have—and one not likely to be replaced." That prophecy proved right; the book has not been replaced, and historians and critics agree that it is the definitive work on its subject. Now it is made available once more, after being out of print for some time. This is a history of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party, under whose banners a great crusade for farm relief was waged in the 1880's and 1890's. As important as the chronicle of the political movement itself is the detailed picture which Professor Hicks gives of the conditions which set the stage for this agrarian revolt. He describes the inequities and malpractices which beset both the new settlers of the West and the poverty-ridden whites and Negroes of the South following the Civil War. The story of Populism itself is a lively one, people with such picturesque leaders as "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman of South Carolina, "Sockless" Jerry Simpson and Mary Elizabeth Lease—the "Patrick Henry in petticoats"—of Kansas, "Bloody Bridles" Waite of Colorado, Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, Dr. C. W. Macune of Texas, James B. Weaver of Iowa, and Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota. In these pages, Professor Hicks has, as Frederic L. Paxson pointed out, "presented the case for Populism better than the Populists themselves could do it." Henry Steele Commanger calls the book a "thorough, scholarly, sympathetic and spirited history of the entire Populist movement."

The Oxford Handbook of Populism presents the state of the art of research on populism from the perspective of Political Science. The book features work from the leading experts in the field, and synthesizes the main strands of research in four compact sections: concepts, issues, regions, and normative debates. Due to its breath, The Oxford Handbook of Populism is an invaluable resource for those interested in the study of populism, but also forexperts in each of the topics discussed, who will benefit from accounts of current discussions and research gaps, as well as a map of new directions in the study of populism.

Richard Hofstadter (1916-70) was America’s most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism’s most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation’s most important and prolific public intellectuals. In this masterful biography, David Brown explores Hofstadter’s life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. According to Brown, Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America’s hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy. By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years, as Brown shows, culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter’s critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied. As this fascinating biography ultimately shows, Hofstadter’s observations on the struggle between conservative and liberal America are relevant to our own times, and his legacy challenges us to this day.