Progressives 100 years ago were deeply concerned about vast income inequalities, concentrated corporate power, a weak labor movement, high immigration rates, threats to small-scale producers and retailers, middle-class debt levels, environmental degradation and unsafe food, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and the deteriorating quality of family life. Sound familiar?

The Progressive Era changed America profoundly, and this book argues that modern-day progressives must return to their roots by protecting families (rather than individuals) from the social and environmental ravages of global capital. In doing so, they should also stress the importance of wide-scale ownership of property—including both real estate and secure financial assets—both to reduce inequalities of wealth and to save more Americans from what the original progressives recognized as “wage slavery.”

Praise for The Next Progressive Era

“Every page of this provocative book contains a compelling historical insight or fresh idea. Some ideas are old—‘the yeoman ideal.’ Some are new—‘personal fabricators.’ All tap a spirit of reform and renewal that lies deep in the marrow of America.”
—Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope

“The Next Progressive Era is as honest and fair as it is smart and engaging. Longman and Boshara are interested in thinking deep, not stacking the deck or scoring points. Conservatives, in particular, will find it invaluable as a clear-eyed excavation of the period and a new way of examining first principles.”
—Jonathan Last, The Weekly Standard and Philadelphia Inquirer

“In this well-woven blend of history and policy pitching, Longman and Boshara maintain that a new Progressive Era is at hand. They deftly explain the political, economic, and social shifts that have led to this moment. More important, they offer a sensible policy agenda and a vigorous political case for their ideas predicated on time-tested Progressive values but crafted for the daunting challenges of today.”
—David Corn, Mother Jones

“A political era is defined not just by elected leaders and policies, but also by the habits of ordinary people and by what Americans think it means to lead a meaningful life. Values like thrift, mutual responsibility, and thinking about the future can define the next decades of our country’s life. Longman and Boshara have a brilliant vision of how to nurture those values.”
—Mark Schmitt, The American Prospect

“An engaging exploration of a transformative political movement much invoked but little understood. Modern progressives will be inspired and occasionally dismayed by their predecessors’ solutions to a set of strikingly familiar problems. Either way, their analysis of how to set the country back on the course of progress will be stronger for this book.”
—Christopher Hayes, The Nation

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“… [A]n astute policy guide, communicating the urgency for reform in health care, banking and transportation without resorting to shrillness or stridency.” –Publishers Weekly

WHAT WOULD THE ORIGINAL PROGRESSIVES DO?
Authors from the New America Foundation find solutions from the last great Age of Reform

Sausalito, CA – Barack Obama’s election has been hailed as the dawn of a new Progressive Era. But with the President’s approval ratings beginning to sag and public anger building over Wall Street bailouts and bonuses, spreading unemployment and foreclosures, a still broken health care system, and much more, do today’s progressive have a coherent strategy for achieving the reforms America must make?

In their new book, The Next Progressive Era: A Blueprint for Broad Prosperity, Phillip Longman and Ray Boshara, show how today’s progressives have much to learn from their counterparts of a hundred years ago. The original progressives built super-majorities in both parties and achieved stunning reforms by combining scientific expertise with deep deference to all-American values, particularly those of freedom-loving, small-scale entrepreneurs and producers.

Much of their program we must reject today, yet Americans at the turn of the last century confronted issues so eerily like that own that their experience provides many useful lessons. More so than during the New Deal, the major challenges of Progressive era included a globalized economy, predatory consumer lending, deepening income inequality, rapidly shifting demographics, networks of violent non-state actors, a dangerous and ineffective health care system, transportation bottle necks, tainted food supply, a deepening threat of contagious diseases, and a spreading awareness of the need for thrift, conservation and behavioral change.

Longman and Boshara maintain that if modern-day Progressives are to overcome America’s deep political divisions, they will have to focus on the building the strength of the family, local communities and small-scale institutions, including small-scale banks and producer networks empowered with new infrastructure. As in the last Progressive era, Americans will increasingly seem themselves primarily as producers, not consumers and will be eager to preserve their independence from both big government and big business.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, and many other prestigious publications. Formerly a senior writer and deputy assistant managing editor at US News & World Report, he also is the author of Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours (PoliPointPress, 2006).

Ray Boshara is a world-recognized expert on savings and financial security for working families. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and Esquire, which named him one of America’s “Best and Brightest.” As vice president and director of the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, he oversees a program that aims to significantly expand savings and the ownership of assets in the United States and around the world.

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The Next Progressive Era: A Blueprint for Broad Prosperity
$22.95 Cloth, 240 pages, PoliPointPress, Publication Date, April 2, 2009