A brief, interpretive analysis of the highly ambitious American reform movements from the 1890s to 1917 that shows progressivism to have been a vital and significant phenomenon although there was no unified progressive movement. Link and McCormick succeed in making the events comprehensible while at the same time conveying a strong sense of the complexity and contradictions of the era.

Arthur Stanley Link was an American historian and educator, known as the leading authority on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Richard Levis McCormick is a historian, professor and president emeritus of Rutgers University.