“Paulson offers fresh insights from probing contested key words to capture cultural conflict within individuals as well as institutions.” — , American Journal of Sociology
“This is a good book, based upon a wide-ranging synthesis of the relevant literature. . . . Paulson interweaves his interest in American’s core values in a sophisticated and sensitive fashion, simultaneously discussing how they related to race, ethnicity, gender, and class, over a tumultuous and extended time frame. It is recommended for anyone seriously interested in the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, and the often lean years of the 1920s.” — H-Net Reviews
“This volume is not only an interesting blend of social groups, juxtaposed in the first part of the book and intermingled in the second part; it is also a challenge in use of language, definitions, and legal and intellectual argument. . . . [A] brave attempt to organise key questions about race, gender, and class into an intellectual history which provides a critique of Americans’ concerns to maintain individual liberty at the expense of equality and justice for all.” — Margaret Walsh, Business History
“Paulson’s analysis speaks to long-standing debates over the core values that define American society and the repeated attempts in America’s past to bring those values and that society into greater harmony through movements for social change.” — Nancy A. Hewitt, Duke University
“Paulson’s delicate interweaving of civil rights, women’s history, and business regulation causes the reader to reconsider the connectedness of strands of Gilded Age and Progressive Era social change that historians often keep separate. In elegant prose his thoughtful and compelling reinterpretation illuminates our understanding of the era in truly innovative ways.” — Stacy A. Cordery, Monmouth College
“Paulson’s work is a fine addition to our historical understanding of a central theme in American history—the priority of individual rights over collective welfare. This is an important book that will have an important historiographic impact.” — Kathryn Kish Sklar, SUNY Binghamton