The United States in the opening years of the twentieth century experienced an age of titans. The most significant were the three political giants of twentieth-century America, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1901–9), Woodrow Wilson (1913–21), and, after an interval, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–45).

For twenty years after the turn of the century the Republican TR and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson proved themselves dynamic leaders who dominated American politics. In every presidential election between 1900 and 1916 at least one of them stood as a candidate and in 1912, two. In the next election of 1920 the major issue...

The most spectacular building of the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo in the summer of 1901 was the central Electric Tower. It stood at the head of the Court of Fountains, rising 375 feet, “the high C of the entire architectural symphony.” Julian Hawthorne wrote inCosmopolitan Magazinehow “the shaft of the Electric Tower … assumes a magical aspect, as if it had been summoned forth by the genius of our united people … and it makes a tender nuptial with the sky and seems to palpitate with beautiful life.”

The exposition, known variously as the Rainbow City and...

Theodore Roosevelt’s accession to the presidency, albeit in tragic circumstances, signaled the end of the Gilded Age of 1865-1901 and the opening of the Progressive Era of 1901–17. It seemed that progress, whether in inventions, industry, or democratic government, was the key to modern America. It was an insistence on progress that underlay the reform movement we call Progressivism and that was at its zenith in the early twentieth century. Reformers tried to bring rational order to politics, industry, and cities as the United States was being transformed from a rural to an urban and industrial economy. Progressives thought...

The friendship of Roosevelt and Taft had determined the presidency for one term; their estrangement determined it for two. For some time the growing rift between Roosevelt and Taft had been deepening inexorably. Suddenly, a chasm opened. On the morning of October 27, 1911, Roosevelt read how Attorney General George W. Wickersham had, the day before, begun a suit to have U.S. Steel dissolved, charging that the corporation was a monopoly. Furthermore, he read how Wickersham was supposed to have said that U.S. Steel had achieved its monopoly by acquiring the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company four years earlier and,...

On December 10, 1910, the Metropolitan Opera gave the world premier of an opera by the most famous living Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini.The Girl of the Golden Westwas a romantic melodrama set in a gold-mining camp in California at the time of the gold rush. It was performed by a brilliant cast led by the world’s leading tenor, Enrico Caruso, and Emmy Destinn and Pasquale Amato, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. It met with a rapturous response and the composer himself took fifty-two curtain calls.

The heroine, Minnie, is the miners’ schoolteacher on Sundays and the hostess...

In the opening scene of his filmThe Bank, Charlie Chaplin demonstrated the gulf between capital and labor. He strode purposefully into a bank and across to the safe. Having carefully dialed the correct combination, he opened the door, entered, and reemerged carrying a mop and pail. InWhy is there no Socialism in the United States?(1906), by German political scientist Werner Sombart, Sombart believed that American workers were so well provided for that socialism was not needed in the United States. This would not have been the opinion of Russian playwright, novelist, and revolutionary Maxim Gorky. Gorky prophesied...

When Nora slams the door of a doll’s house shut at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s play, the bang signals the advent of a new woman. The new, assertive woman of the rising middle class was not content to be toy or drudge to her husband, but willing to fight to make her opinions known and secure her rightful place in society. The idea of the woman as business organizer and as sexual predator was further developed by Norwegian playwright Ibsen in such plays asRosmersholm and Hedda Gabler. It was taken further by Swedish dramatist August Strindberg who presented...

“History written in lightning” was Woodrow Wilson’s comment on D. W. Griffith’s film,The Birth of a Nation(1915). His remark also rings true for the way science and technology were extending American industry and manufacturing, notably in the creation and mass production of automobiles and airplanes. When we speak of the world in the twentieth century as a global community, we are not only acknowledging the controversial contributions of imperialism, mass migration, and economic ties between nations geographically far apart, but also advances in communication and transportation. Telephone, radio, television, and satellite links have made communication truly instantaneous. In...

Radio broadcasting is the transmission and reception of communication signals made up of electromagnetic waves traveling through the air and used in programs broadcast for public information, education, and entertainment. Radio broadcasting added a significant new dimension to modern communication, a breakthrough that went beyond the mass communication of motion pictures and telephone because it combined the sound of one with the direct entertainment of the other and carried them directly into the home. This modern form of communication had considerable potential both as a means of social manipulation and control, and of education, relaying news, ideas, and entertainment from...

The distinctive skyline of Manhattan with its towering skyscrapers has become a metaphor for modern American cities. The skyscraper itself, a tall building based on a steel frame, has become the most indigenous form of American architecture. However, it was the new technology of engineering, based on improved processes of steel and the construction of bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, that made possible the new form of American architecture.

Offices in tall buildings depended on new means of communication and illumination—the typewriter, telephone, elevator, and electric light—all of which were invented in the 1870s....

Conflict between old and new has been part of the very fabric of America, and the American worlds of art and literature in the twentieth century have been no exception. American painting and American literature, like the nation itself, underwent great changes in the first half of the twentieth century. New styles were applied and new themes exploited and this ensured vitality and variety in the visual and the written arts. Among these was modernism, a usage, mode of expression, or peculiarity of style or workmanship characteristic of modern times. Jonathan Swift used the term in 1737; in 1864 Nathaniel...

One of the clearest signs that the twentieth century would be the American century was the great overseas expansion of the United States. This was not simply a matter of acquiring land, whether as colonies, dependencies, or protectorates, but, also, of expanding commerce and trade and, by so doing, penetrating the economic infrastructure of other societies across the world. Following the emergence of the United States as the world’s dominant industrial power, American manufacturers were seeking markets abroad and financiers were beginning to invest capital overseas. “Our industries have expanded to such a point that they will burst their jackets...

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on Sunday, June 28, 1914, led to a great war because the incident and its sequels touched upon the most sensitive nerve ends of the great powers. On July 7 Austria-Hungary decided on war and delivered a stern ultimatum to Serbia on July 23 but was rather surprised to receive a somewhat conciliatory reply on July 27. Nevertheless, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. Russia mobilized its troops to defend its little ally, Serbia, (July 30) and thereby...

The omens for an Allied victory were not good in 1917. Britain was being starved of food by submarines that were also destroying its ships. The French army launched an assault on the western front that failed and this led to mutinies in the army. The Russian armies were disintegrating with desertions and mutinies. In the fall, Austria and Germany launched a major offensive against Italy. In October the Bolshevik Revolution, led by Lenin and Trotsky, felled the Kerensky government and, intent on wide social reform, they prepared to treat with Germany.

As committed Marxists, the Bolsheviks also wanted to...