History / United States / 20th Century

At the end of the nineteenth century, Pittsburgh was leading the nation in glass production, and glass bottle plants in particular relied heavily on adolescent (and younger) males for their manufacturing process. These “glass house boys” worked both day and night, as plants ran around the clock to meet production ...

The year 2005 marked the centennial of the founding of the United States Forest Service (USFS). Samuel P. Hays uses this occasion to present a cogent history of the role of American society in shaping the policies and actions of this agency. From its establishment in 1905 under the auspices of the ...

At its formation in 1901, the United States Steel Corporation was the earth’s biggest industrial corporation, a wonder of the manufacturing world. Immediately it produced two thirds of America’s raw steel and thirty percent of the steel made worldwide. The behemoth company would go on to support the manufacturing ...

John Hoerr tells the story of three men—his uncle, Congressman Harry Davenport, union leader Tom Quinn, and Father Charles Owen Rice—whose lives became intertwined during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy Era. The story helps illuminate one of the more repressive periods in ...

Born in Panama in 1910, Maida Springer grew up in Harlem. While still a young girl she learned firsthand of the bleak employment options available to African American females of her time. After one employer closed his garment shop and ran off with the workers’ wages in the midst of the ...

The relevance and importance of Samuel P. Hay's book, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, has only increased over time. Written almost half a century ago, it offers an invaluable history of the conservation movement's origins, and provides an excellent context for understanding contemporary enviromental problems and possible ...

This extraordinary work of oral history captures the immense drama and full dimensions of the American immigrant experience. The men and women who tell their stories include such famous names as Alistair Cooke, W. Michael Blumenthal, Edward Teller, and Lynn Redgrave. But they share these pages with 136 other people whose ...

Toward a National Power Policy offers a comprehensive analysis of the conflict between Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the electric utility industry. Philip J. Funigiello outlines the origins and evolution of the privately owned industry, and the growth of an anti-monopoly movement in the 1920s. He details the ...

The Progressives and the Slums chronicles the reform of tenement housing, where some of the worst living conditions in the world existed. Roy Lubove focuses his study on New York City, detailing the methods, accomplishments, and limitations of housing reform at the turn of the twentieth century. The book is ...

Administration in time of war has come to revolve around the President, and much of the administrative authority of the President is then delegated to extralegal agents. Grundstein's analysis of the experiences of World War I show that such delegation is inevitable: From the beginning of the war Congress ...