A gripping and inspiring book, Civic Passions examines innovative
leadership in periods of crisis in American history. Starting from the
late nineteenth century, when respected voices warned that America was
on the brink of collapse, Cecelia Tichi explores the wisdom of practical
visionaries who were confronted with a series of social, political, and
financial upheavals that, in certain respects, seem eerily similar to
modern times. The United States--then, as now--was riddled with
political corruption, financial panics, social disruption, labor strife,
and bourgeois inertia.
Drawing on a wealth of evocative personal accounts, biographies, and
archival material, Tichi brings seven iconoclastic--and often
overlooked--individuals from the Gilded Age back to life. We meet
physician Alice Hamilton, theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, jurist Louis
D. Brandeis, consumer advocate Florence Kelley, antilynching activist
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, economist John R. Commons, and child-welfare
advocate Julia Lathrop. Bucking the status quo of the Gilded Age as well
as middle-class complacency, these reformers tirelessly garnered popular
support as they championed progressive solutions to seemingly
intractable social problems.
Civic Passions is a provocative and powerfully written social history,
a collection of minibiographies, and a user's manual on how a generation
of social reformers can turn peril into progress with fresh, workable
ideas. Together, these narratives of advocacy provide a stunning
precedent of progressive action and show how citizen-activists can
engage the problems of the age in imaginative ways. While offering
useful models to encourage the nation in a newly progressive direction,
Civic Passions reminds us that one determined individual can make a
difference.
