While Cathleen and I are working on new content for the podcast—stay tuned, there’s lots of exciting stuff coming—we wanted to take a moment to revisit some of Michael’s excellent past episodes.

For my first “best of” pick, I chose Episode 17, Oceans of Grain, which originally aired on March 2, 2022. In this episode, Michael talks with historian Scott Reynolds Nelson about how the global trade in wheat reshaped the modern world. It’s a fascinating look at how the Gilded Age and Progressive Era fit into a much larger story of empire, capitalism, and global connection.

When the episode first aired, Russia had just invaded Ukraine, and Nelson’s discussion of the Black Sea grain routes suddenly felt eerily relevant. Listening again now, it’s striking how powerfully this conversation links nineteenth-century global trade to the world we live in today.

We hope you’ll enjoy (re)listening as much as we did—and we’d love to know which episodes stand out as your favourites!

Essential Reading:

Scott Reynolds Nelson, Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Neal Ascherson, The Black Sea (1996).

Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (2017).

Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1989).

Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and their Lasting Impact (2004).

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Boyd and I are working on new content for the podcast-we have lots of good stuff planned for the future.

But in the meantime, we wanted to take a moment to revisit some of Michael’s excellent content.

We each picked two of the previous episodes as our “best of” but we totally acknowledge that we could have picked many more than two; this was a very tough choice, but we hope you enjoy (re)listening as much as we did. And we'd love to know which are your favorite episodes!

Christopher McKnight Nichols and Nancy Unger, A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. (John Wiley & Sons, 2017)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118913994

For a nice short introduction to historical thinking with some more definitions, check out Flannery Burke and Thomas Andrews' Perspectives essay, "What Does it Mean to Think Historically": https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically-january-2007/

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Think you know the story of women’s suffrage? Think again. In this episode of The Gilded Age and Progressive Era Podcast, Boyd sits down with co-host Cathleen D. Cahill to discuss her groundbreaking book Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement (UNC Press, 2020). Cahill’s book challenges the traditional narrative of women’s suffrage by centring the Indigenous, African American, Latina, and Asian American women who organized, mobilized, and redefined the fight for political rights.

Cahill introduces us to a cast of remarkable women—Zitkála-Šá, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Carrie Williams Clifford, and Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren—who pushed the fight for the vote beyond white, middle-class reformers. Their activism linked suffrage to sovereignty, citizenship, immigration, and racial justice, recasting the movement as part of a much bigger struggle for equality.

Along the way, we explore why the story doesn’t end in 1920 with the Nineteenth Amendment—and why it still matters for today’s fights over voting rights.

Further Reading:

Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997)

Martha S. Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020)

Michelle Duster, Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells (2021)

Alison M. Parker, Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell (2020)

Jad Adams, Women and the Vote: A World History (2014)

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