gilded age

In The Bully Pulpit, Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses the Progressive Movement through the eyes of three principal actors—Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Samuel S. McClure—along with the remarkable contributors to McClure’s Magazine, notably Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White.

As in her previous histories of Lincoln, the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson, Kearns Goodwin provides rich descriptions of the relationships among the many players in her books. This makes her writing so much more compelling than histories that merely