Madison, a History of the Formative Years

Madison, a History of the Formative Years
Author: David V. Mollenhoff
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299199807

Madison is richly detailed, fully documented, inclusive in coverage, and has more than 300 illustrations to provide a vivid feeling of life in Madison during the formative years.

The History of Wisconsin, Volume IV

The History of Wisconsin, Volume IV
Author: John D. Buenker
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Total Pages: 781
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0870206311

Published in Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial year, this fourth volume in The History of Wisconsin series covers the twenty tumultuous years between the World's Columbian Exposition and the First World War when Wisconsin essentially reinvented itself, becoming the nation's "laboratory of democracy." The period known as the Progressive Era began to emerge in the mid-1890s. A sense of crisis and a widespread clamor for reform arose in reaction to rapid changes in population, technology, work, and society. Wisconsinites responded with action: their advocacy of women's suffrage, labor rights and protections, educational reform, increased social services, and more responsive government led to a veritable flood of reform legislation that established Wisconsin as the most progressive state in the union. As governor and U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., was the most celebrated of the Progressives, but he was surrounded by a host of pragmatic idealists from politics, government, and the state university. Although the Progressives frequently disagreed over priorities and tactics, their values and core beliefs coalesced around broad-based participatory democracy, the application of scientific expertise to governance, and an active concern for the welfare of all members of society-what came to be known as "the Wisconsin Idea."