The Vital Margin: Interpreting Progressive Politics in Modern America

FAIN: FT-51375-03

Douglas C. Rossinow
Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, MN 55106-5000)

The Vital Margin narrates the interaction of left and liberal politics in America over the course of more than a century, from Bryan to Nader. In doing so, this work reinterprets key issues that have absorbed generations of political historians, while also addressing issues of contemporary concern. The Vital Margin achieves a synthesis of the consensus and conflict schools of American political history. This work restores in all its complexity the combustible political relationship between American liberal reformers and left-wing radicals, surveying both their common ideological ground and their profound differences. It provides a new map locating the sources of democratic ideas in industrial America.