The new Republican Gilded Age

Meet the new Republican dystopia, same as the old

President Trump, Melania Trump, Mike Pence, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images, ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images, AP Photo)

The Republican Party has the run of the federal government. What sort of society do they wish to create? The Gilded Age — an often-overlooked period from the mid-1870s to 1900 — provides some important lessons.

The Gilded Age is part of the subject of an important new history by Richard White, The Republic For Which It Stands, the most recent entry in the Oxford History of the United States series. It's both an excellent piece of historical scholarship and an insightful view of what happened the last time the current Republican ideological platform was put into practice.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.