The measure of a book rests mainly in how often I return to it, specifically, and how often I reflect upon it when reading another work. So here at the end – a few items on the reading list have distinguished themselves for the aforementioned reasons. Two have proven themselves extremely helpful with my teaching job. William Leuchtenburg and Linda Kerber take the top credit in this regard.
These prized-five listed here in no particular order are:
(1) Unruly Americans – Woody Holton
(2) American Slavery, American Freedom – Edmund Morgan
(3) The Supreme Court Reborn - William Leuchtenburg
(4) Roll, Jordan, Roll - Eugene Genovese
(5) No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies - Linda Kerber
I must say that it is difficult to limit the list just to five selections. Lizbeth Cohen's Making a New Deal is a compelling work that asserts itself as a non-fictional cousin to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Without prejudice, Paul Lombardo's Three Generations, No Imbeciles provides investigative zeal and solid historical writing that allow it to stand alone as a powerful work and make it a natural companion to other books related to the Progressive Era's dark side.
