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T. Adams Upchurch , ed. Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age. "Historical Dictionaries of U.S. Historical Eras, No. 13." Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2009. xxxv + 276 pp. Chronology, introduction, appendices, and bibliography. $80.00.
Catherine Cocks, Peter C. Holloran, and Alan Lessoff, eds. Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era. "Historical Dictionaries of U.S. Historical Eras, No. 12." Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2009. l + 624 pp. Chronology, introduction, illustrations, appendices, and bibliography. $150.00.

These two reference works are the latest volumes in the Scarecrow Press series of dictionaries on chronological segments of United States history. Together this pair extends from the end of Reconstruction, which editor T. Adams Upchurch places at 1869, to the end of the Progressive Era, which for that volume's editors was 1919. The Gilded Age volume stops crisply at 1899, excluding people who may have been around before then but whose main claims to fame came later. There is, however, some overlap, as the Progressive Era volume starts in the late 1880s; the first item in its chronology is the Dawes Act of 1887. Neither book (hereinafter referred to as GA and PE) apparently had recourse to outside experts, and it is quite remarkable that three historians could have written the 494 pages of entries in the PE volume, and that only one wrote the 229 pages of entries in the GA volume, even with assistance from fact-checkers. It is not clear why the PE volume has three editors and is more than twice as long as the GA volume, since each covers about thirty years (1869-1899, 1887-1919). It is clear, however, from the extra-sturdy covers and the lofty retail prices, that libraries rather than individuals will be the main market for them.

The formats of both volumes are roughly similar. After the series editor's foreword and a list of acronyms and abbreviations, they begin with a year-by-year chronology of major events, nine pages long in the GA volume, fourteen in the PE volume. Then come introductions, wherein the author-editors give their overviews of their periods. The alphabetical dictionary entries follow, comprising the bulk of each book. A first appendix, "Presidents and Their Administrations," provides popular and electoral votes and the names of [End Page 493] presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet members. Another appendix reprints constitutional amendments, the Fifteenth in the GA volume and the Sixteenth through the Nineteenth in the PE volume. Finally come bibliographies of mostly recent scholarly books, listed alphabetically within categories. The GA volume's is good, running about thirty pages, while the PE's is nothing less than exhaustive at about 120 pages, taking the first seven to list its categories. That alone renders the PE volume particularly useful. Neither volume has an index, but entries are cross-referenced by bold type.

The introductions deserve remark. The introduction to the GA volume first discusses "naming," "dating," and "defining" the Gilded Age. "The Gilded Age acquired its name because a famous humorist and author living at the time, Mark Twain, first called it that" (p. xxvi). Agreed, but does that require retelling? Perhaps. "Dating" is a little more complicated. The author-editor mulls over 1865 and 1877 as starting points but finds them problematic. He settles on 1869 because of five events that year. First is Grant's accession, which he says began to turn the nation's attention away from the South and toward "the economic and political problems of the North" (p. xxviii). Second is the Central Pacific-Union Pacific's golden (actually, he points out, gilded) spike. Third, the formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association and women getting the vote in Wyoming Territory. Fourth, the Knights of Labor; and fifth, professional baseball. Later, he settles on one of these: "10 May 1869 marked the symbolic beginning of the Gilded Age" with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad (p. 204). The period ends in 1899 "simply [because] most features which characterized the Gilded Age seem to have largely run their course by this time" (p. xxviii).

"Defining" the period, Upchurch finds that its "real zeitgeist . . . was its thrust to achieve true...

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