Review
The world is a dynamic and unstable place; violent conflicts erupt,
political differences divide our nation, a fantastic expansion of wealth gives
way to recession, perhaps depression. Though it may sound like a summary of the
week's headlines, this is the world as it appeared more than a century ago on
the cusp of The Gilded Age, the unalloyed era of American progress that serves
as backdrop for Barry Werth's new work of popular history. Offering a
fascinating window onto the battle of ideas that raged as United States was
catapulted to the status of a global power by its industrial might,
Banquet
at Delmonico's will make an enjoyable read for anyone wanting to learn
about an eminently relevant era of U.S. history and have some fun in the
bargain.
The book's subtitle is
Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of
Evolution in...
Beyond the Book
It may seem that the concept of globalization is a very new one, and that
the growth of free trade and its accompanying controversy belong to our era
alone. In fact, the 1860s saw an explosion of trade between nations, accompanied
by a doctrine of free markets unbridled by government intervention. Unlike
today, though, many of the free marketeers of this earlier era were willing to
apply their logic outside the realm of economics, to human societies and to
human beings themselves.
These are the Social Darwinists (sometimes called Social Positivists) whose
thinking stood behind the great economic expansion, was challenged by a global
recession, and ultimately fell out of favor in the United States when the
princely accumulation of wealth and power by a...
