I have constructed this book to reveal something of the first years of
twentieth-century America through the writings of men and women who
helped to shape those years. Rather than extract small selections from
many sources, I have chosen from only a few writers unified selections
substantial enough to convey the style of their thought and the depth of
of their preoccupations. Only eleven men and one woman (besides the
editor) have been entrusted with these years in this book, but they were
for the most part extraordinary people. Theodore Roosevelt and Wood-
row Wilson were American Presidents and accomplished historians;
Roosevelt and Jane Addams each won a Nobel Prize for peace; Eugene
Debs was a candidate for President and the embodiment of fundamental
but responsible social dissent; Walter Lippmann was an advisor to a
President; Frederic Howe, Lawrence Veiller, and Jane Addams were
civic experts and reformers; Lincoln Steffens, Finley Peter Dunne, Howe,
and Lippmann wrote influential journalism; and William James, writer,
psychologist, philosopher, may have cast a deeper shadow than any of
the rest. They were at once writers and doers. They embodied their age,
they wrote to influence their age, and in consequence their writings can
tell us much about their age.

Most of the selections presented here have been left substantially uncut.
I have omitted footnotes whose functions were largely citation, and I
have chosen to leave out occasional paragraphs of material I considered
to be of little or no general interest to present readers. Omissions of this
latter sort are indicated in the text. As a rule I have made use of coherent
units of prose, such as articles, chapters, or groups of chapters. It is my
hope that these selections will awaken interest in further reading, and I
offer accordingly at the end of the book some recommendations for fur-
ther reading: they represent personal enthusiasms as well as professional
judgment.

I have believed it unnecessary to footnote the editorial and introduc-
tory material; it draws on the sources mentioned in the Suggestions for
Further Reading and on the editor's general investigations made over

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