Richard White - The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896

I have written a book about a time of rapid and disorienting change and failed politics, and now I finish it in a parallel universe. Fittingly, I decided to write this book about the Gilded Age, in part for the money, but the era came to fascinate me. I lost myself in it.

I needed money because my mother had dementia. She died more than a year before this book was finished. I would lie if I said I didnt at times find my retreat into the late nineteenth century, with all of its turmoil, pain, and suffering, a relief. The past is the secret refuge of historians. It was a retreat my wife, stuck in the present and sharing the care for my mother over nearly ten years, did not have. This only increases my love for her and my gratitude to her.

The Gilded Age delivered me up to the doorstep of my own family history in the United States. One of my grandparents was the child of Jewish immigrants from Poland who arrived during the Gilded Age. My Jewish grandfather came from Belarus around the turn of the century. My maternal grandmother came from Ireland about the same time. My Irish grandfather, following his relatives, came later. One grandfather was an illegal immigrant; the other was nearly deported back to Russia. They stepped into the world whose origins I describe here. They did not have easy lives. Both of my Irish grandparents returned to where they came, but not at the same time. They lived apart in different countries for years. They left children here.

My family now, as my brothers and sister, children, and nephews have married, contains Catholics, Protestants, Jews, agnostics, and atheists. Some come from Mexico; part of my nephews wifes family comes from India. Some have roots stretching back deep into America for generations. Their connections, including mine, still include people from the places where they or their parents originated.

My mother and father and my grandparents, though dead; my wife, and children and grandchildren; my siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews; and my in-laws are inseparable from the writing of this book. I was simply going to dedicate this book to my own messy, contentious, diverse, and irreplaceable family, but it is necessary to say something more because I realized that I had somehow arrived at a time when my country, which I love in my own perverse way, is making devotion to family antithetical to devotion to country, in a way that ironically echoes the Gilded Age. I find this easier to describe and analyze as an historian than indulge or endure as a citizen.

I have had much help in writing this book. Friends and colleagues have saved me from mistakes, but I am sure they have not saved me from all of them. Elliott West, Daniel Czitrom, Jon Levy, Daniel Carpenter, Willie Forbath, Jen Seltz, Matthew Klingle, Gavin Jones, Gavin Wright, Rachel St. John, and Destin Jenkins all read parts of this manuscript. David Blight and Michael Kazin read most of it. I owe them a debt of gratitude.

David Blight, Beth Lew-Williams, and Louis Warren allowed me to see manuscripts of their forthcoming books, which aided me immensely.

Jennifer Peterson was up to any task I asked of her. She caught mistakes in the text, did research, and helped gather photographs. Branden Adams and Gabriel Lee gave aid at a critical time.

David Kennedy, the editor for The Oxford History of the United States series and my colleague at Stanford, is as skilled a writer as he is an historian. He and Susan Ferber, my editor at Oxford, read several drafts of this book, so many that it eventually must have seemed like a bad penny that would never go away. Every reading they gave it made it better. Whatever the books shortcomings, they are not responsible, but they deserve credit for its merits. The final product is much better for both their editorial interventions, which I deeply appreciate.