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.