The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz (W.W. Norton & Company, 969 pages, $35.00)

During the early 20th century, “Progressive historians” interpreted the American past as an epic struggle to perfect a democratic republic for the common people. Adopting the great American taste for moral melodrama, they cast Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as heroic democrats pitted against the elitist defenders of privileged wealth: Federalists and Whigs. Progressive history served the politics of the Progressive Era: the construction of an activist and reformist state pitched against entrenched business interests.