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The half-century between 1880 and 1930 saw rampant growth in many American cities and an equally rapid movement of women into the work force. In Los Angeles, the city not only grew from a dusty cow town to a major American metropolis but also offered its residents myriad new opportunities and challenges.Earning Power examines the role that women played in this growth as they attempted to make their financial way in a rapidly changing world. Los Angeles during these years was one of the most ethnically diverse and gender-balanced American cities. Moreover, its accelerated urban growth generated a great deal of economic, social, and political instability. In Earning Power, author Eileen V. Wallis examines how women negotiated issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class to gain access to professions and skilled work in Los Angeles. She also discusses the contributions they made to the region’s history as political and social players, employers and employees, and as members of families. Wallis reveals how the lives of women in the urban West differed in many ways from those of their sisters in more established eastern cities. She finds that the experiences of women workers force us to reconsider many assumptions about the nature of Los Angeles’s economy, as well as about the ways women participated in it. The book also considers how Angelenos responded to the larger national social debate about women’s work and the ways that American society would have to change in order to accommodate working women. Earning Power is a major contribution to our understanding of labor in the urban West during this transformative period and of the crucial role that women played in shaping western cities, economies, society, and politics.

Often overlooked in labor history, the hoboes who rode the rails in search of seasonal work nevertheless secured a place in the American imagination. Frank Tobias Higbie weaves together history, anthropology, gender studies, and literary analysis to reposition these workers at the center of Progressive Era debates over class, race, manly responsibility, community, and citizenship. Combining incisive cultural criticism with labor history, Higbie illustrates how these so-called marginal figures were in fact integral to communities and to cultural conflicts over class, masculinity, and sexuality. He draws from life histories, the investigations of social reformers, and the organizing materials of the Industrial Workers of the World to present a complex portrait of hobo life, from its often violent and dangerous working conditions to its ethic of “transient mutuality” that enabled survival and resistance on the road. 

Frank and compelling,Indispensable Outcasts examines hoboes within the sprawling story of American labor while meditating on writing history from the bottom up and the ways a fascination with personal narrative can color a historian's work.

A groundbreaking study, Lynching in the New South is a classic portrait of the tradition of violence that poisoned American life.

A study of the theological and cultural conflicts that reshaped American Protestantism in the modern age.0false18 pt18 pt00falsefalsefalse

The Divided Mind of Protestant America, 1880–1930 by Ferenc M. Szasz is a landmark study of the religious, intellectual, and cultural conflicts that transformed American Protestantism during a pivotal period in United States history. Examining the rise of theological liberalism, the emergence of modern biblical criticism, the growing influence of science, and the reaction of conservative believers, Szasz traces the origins of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy that reshaped American Christianity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Through careful analysis of denominational debates, religious leaders, and broader social movements, the book reveals how issues such as evolution, higher criticism, and changing cultural values challenged traditional Protestant beliefs. As Protestant churches struggled to respond to modernity, divisions emerged that altered the course of American religious life and influenced public discussions about faith, education, morality, and national identity.

Both accessible and scholarly, this influential volume demonstrates how religious controversies that unfolded between 1880 and 1930 established patterns that continue to shape American Christianity today. By placing theological disputes within their wider historical context, Szasz offers readers a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between religion and culture in modern America. This book is an essential resource for students and scholars of religious history, theology, American studies, and cultural history.