The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Why have we not heard about Miriam Leslie? She was one of the richest New York women, and a media tycoon. She was also a seductress who broke the era's gender norms and charlatan that concocted her origin story. Her life is riveting and no better author to bring this biography to life than Betsy Prioleau. Essential Reading:Betsy Prioleau, Diamonds and Deadlines: The Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in the Gilded Age (2022).

No one can dispute the importance of the Great War, but where the conflict began, and the ideas that set it apart from other wars is the starting point of this episode. Patrick Cohrs discusses his latest tome The New Atlantic Order and explains how the long origin of World War I began in the 1860s and has reverberated to this very day. Essential Reading:Patrick O. Cohrs, The New Atlantic Order (2022).

The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is one of the most important African American Churches in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and Christina Dickerson-Cousin shares how the AME worked in Indian Territory. The story is one of shared issues and common interests that helps add nuance to our understanding of the period.Essential Reading:Christina Dickerson-Cousin, Black Indians & Freedmen: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Indigenous Americans, 1816-1916 (2021).