SUGGESTED READING ★ A-3Blackhawk, Ned. Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early Amer-
ican West (2006). A history of the long conflict between Native Americans
and the federal government for control of the trans- Mississippi West.
Deutsch, Sarah. No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on the Anglo-
Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940 (1987). A careful
analysis of the changing experience of people of Hispanic origin in the
Southwest during these years.
Fink, Leon. Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics
(1983). Examines the rise of the Knights of Labor and their forays into
local politics in the mid- 1880s.
Foster, Gaines. Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legis-
lation of Morality, 1865–1920 (2002). Traces the rise of efforts to use the
federal government to promote Protestant notions of moral behavior.
Freeberg, Ernest. The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern
America (2013). Explores the numerous ways electricity altered Americans’
lives.
Hamalainen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire (2008). The rise and fall of Coman-
che domination over much of the southwestern United States.
Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944). A classic
study of a major tendency in American thought during the Gilded Age.
Jeffrey, Julie R. Frontier Women: “Civilizing” the West? 1840–1880 (rev. ed., 1998).
A study, based on letters and diaries, of the experience of women on the
western frontier.
Kasson, Joy S. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History
(2000). An account of the popular theatrical production that helped to fix
an image of the Wild West in the American imagination.
Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896
(1969). The standard narrative of national politics during these years.
Shannon, Fred A. The Farmer’s Last Frontier: Agriculture 1860–1897 (1945).
Remains an excellent introduction to the experience of farmers in the last
four decades of the nineteenth century.
Sproat, John G. “The Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (1968). Traces
the origins, outlook, and political impact of reformers dissatisfied with the
corruption of national politics.
Thomas, John L. Alternative Americas: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry
Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition (1983). A thorough exposition of
the thought of three critics of Gilded Age society.
Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the
Gilded Age (1982). An influential survey of how economic change affected
American life during the Gilded Age.
White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern
America (2011). A careful study of the building of the transcontinental