Book Alert / Contesting the Past, Reconstructing the Nation

Contesting the Past, Reconstructing the Nation -- American Literature and Culture in the Gilded Age, 1876-1893 by Ben Railton, University of Alabama Press '07, 312 pages, ISBN #0-8173-1580-2. Index, works cited, source notes, unillustrated.

The Gilded Age stands as a pivot in American history between the eras of Civil War and Reconstruction and the advent of the American Century and all it represents. But as Fitchburg (MA) State College historian Ben Railton writes, a lot more has been written about the more recent of those two epochs, an imbalance that Railton seeks to correct.

Authors Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the "Gilded Age" in their 1891 book of the same name. Railton says "the term 'Gilded' provides perfect shorthand for arguments about the period's dual and divided nature, its polished and attractive surface under which hid the at best tarnished and workmanlike and at worst false and ugly realities."

In this new study, Railton looks to the period between the world's fairs of 1876 and 1893 and examines such social issues as race, Native Americans, women and the South, deriving commentary from such classics as Twain's Huckleberry Finn, The Bostonians, Uncle Remus, and The Conjure Woman.