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MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Goodwyn, Lawrence, Democratic Promise, Oxford, 1976.

A path-breaking history of the origins of populism in the Farmers’ Alliance. Includes a serious discussion of the Populists’ monetary theories.

Johnston, Robert, The Radical Middle Class, Princeton, 2003.

A local study of Portland Oregon showing that populist and progressive movements were in fact middle class, but not reactionary or conservative.

Postel, Charles, The Populist Vision, Oxford, 2007.

Emphasizes the forward looking, scientific farming, adult education aspect of Populism. The populists were not anti-intellectual.

Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion, Basic Books, 1995.

From Bryan to the present. A generally sympathetic view. Bryan brought the common man, as distinguished from the wealthy, into American politics for the first time.

Lasch, Christopher, TheTrue and Only Heaven, Norton, 1991.

Like Goodwyn, Lasch believes that the Populists proposed an alternative both to capitalism and communism.

GENERAL

Youngdale, James, Populism: A Psychohistorical Perspective, Kennikat, 1975.

An eccentric book, his division of Populists into Tory Populists (right wing), Socialist Populists (left wing), and mercantilists is interesting.

McMath, Robert, Populism: A Social History, Hill & Wang, 1992.

Johnson, Robert, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations, Harvard, 1995.

McKenna, George, American Populism, Putnam, 1974.

Destler, Chester M.,  American Radicalism 1865-1901, Quadrangle 1946.

Gellner, Ernest,  ed., Populism, Weidenfeld and Nixon, 1969.

An international approach.

SOURCES

Youngdale, James, Third Party Footprints, Ross & Haines, 1966.

First-person testimony from Minnesota’s Farmer Labor Party.

Pollack, Norman. The Populist Mind, Bobbs-Merrill. 1967.

A lot of documentations of what the Populists really thought. Great source.

Abrams, Richard, The Issues of the Populist and Progressive Eras, 1892-1912, South Carolina, 1969; Hofstadter, Richard, The Progressive Movement 1900 to 1915, Touchstone, 1963.

Casebooks for college courses. Basic documents.

CURRENCY QUESTIONS

The Populists had a reputation of being funny-money cranks, but the greenbackers among them were ahead of their time in advocating a “fiat currency”, and their complaints about deliberate deflation and other practices intended to impoverish farmers (“sound currency”, the gold standard, and various monopolies) were valid.

Greider, William, Secrets of the Temple, Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Sympathetic. The place to begin.

Nugent, Walter, Money and American Society, 1865-1880, Free Press, 1968.

A detailed history of the pre-populist era. The much maligned Greenbackers come out looking prophetic, and the “sound currency” goldbugs look like fetishists – to me, but not so much to the author.

Friedman, Milton, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, Princeton, 1963.

His discussion of Populist monetary theory in Ch. 3 is non-committal, neither condemning them as cranks nor giving them credit for  being among the first monetarists.

Goodwyn above also discusses these questions in great detail.

PERSONALITIES

Kazin, Michael, A Godly Hero, Knopf, 2006. (Bryan).

Ridge, Martin, Ignatius Donnelly, Chicago, 1962.

Larson, Bruce, Lindbergh of Minnesota, Harcourt Brace, 1973. (Charles Lindbergh Sr., the Congressman father of the aviator.)

Destler, Chester M., Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform, Pennsylvania, 1963.

Woodward, C. Vann, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, Oxford, 1938.

Adams, Pauline and Thornton, Emma, A Populist Assault, Bowling Green, 1982. (Sarah Vandevoort Emery.)

THE FIFTIES CONTROVERSIES

Hicks’ book treats the Populists as precursors of the new deal. Hofstader was the revisionist, and is primarily responsible for the low opinion most educated people today have of Populism. Bell’s book is an anthology identifying McCarthyism etc. with populism. Woodward, Pollack, and Nugent defend the Populists; Rogin argues that McCarthy was not a populist. Lasch, a student of Hofstadter, writes about the history of American politics from a point of view sympathetic to populism.

Hicks, John, The Populist Revolt, Nebraska, 1962 (originally published 1931).

Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform, Vintage, 1955.

Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, Vintage, 1966.

Hofstadter, Richard, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Knopf, 1965.

David Brown, Richard Hofstadter, Chicago, 2006.

Baker, Susan Stout, Radical Beginnings, Greenwood, 1985. (The early, radical Hofstadter).

Bell, Daniel, ed., The Radical Right, Transaction, 2002.

Woodward, C. Vann, Thinking Back, LSU, 1986.

— The Burden of Southern History, LSU, 1960.

Pollack, Norman, The Populist Response to Industrial America, Harvard, 1962.

Nugent, The Tolerant Populists, Chicago, 1963.

Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy, MIT, 1967.

Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America, Vintage, 1965.

Lasch, Christopher, The Agony of the American Left, Vintage, 1966.