America in 1900

The year 1900 may well seem like another era: Men wore top hats, women endured whalebone corsets, and the marches of John Philip Sousa were all the rage. But as Kent (a historian at the University of Hawaii) argues in this astute snapshot of America at the turn of the last century, such differences are merely superficial: the most profound characteristics of that time closely mirror those of our own. Most obviously, the United States in 1900 was something of an economic miracle. ""New industries emerged based upon products patented in the nineties,"" writes Kent, implicitly drawing parallels to the Internet boom of our own '90s. Long before Bill Gates, there was John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil ruthlessly crushed all competition. Long before AOL and Time-Warner merged (or even existed), J.P. Morgan was buying out Andrew Carnegie's steel interests to form the world's first $1 billion corporation. Kent argues that the age of robber barons is still with us. A hundred years ago, he writes, the top 1% of families owned 50% of the wealth; in 2000, the richest 1% own 40%. Kent draws similarly incisive parallels in other areas, including foreign policy, where he finds echoes of 1900-style imperialism (then in Cuba and the Philippines) in recent U.S. military actions in Serbia and Sudan. The central conceit of this book is, of course, a gimmick, but it allows Kent to shed new light on both past and present. Readers may not agree with all of his arguments, but they will find irresistible Kent's assertion that the events of 100 years ago resonate with us today. (Sept.)