Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City

Burnstein's interpretation of reform activities is meant not only to amend the historical record but also to rehabilitate the reputation of the Progressives and to inspire readers seeking to reshape political debates over social issues. Like Kevin Mattson's Creating a Democratic Public and Michael McGerr's A Fierce Discontent, Burnstein's Next to Godliness considers the implications of the Progressive era for our own; it more closely resembles the former in attempting to scrape off the grime of time and to reclaim reformers' idealism. Burnstein admires their "sense of ingenuous hopefulness that seems almost incomprehensible in our own era" (20) and respects their pragmatic blend of empirical social science and spiritual yearning. Burnstein also acknowledges that their "quasi-tribal 'Anglo-Saxon' consciousness" (79) at times undermined their projects. This particular intolerance compromises Burnstein's effort to demonstrate the relevance of this past to the present. Although the book is well positioned to contribute to ongoing debates over immigration in the United States, it does not comment upon them, perhaps in part because these idealists' ethnocentricism is of little use to today's and tomorrow's progressive moderates. Instead, Burnstein extracts minerals from the dynamics of reformers' and immigrants' interactions with which to nourish compromise and consensus. This history of the Lower East Side's dirty streets fertilizes a middle ground for liberal and conservative Americans frustrated with and willing to abandon the exhausted soil of "simplistic notions of individual responsibility" (76) that hindered past reforms. References to the pages of The American Prospect and The New Republic are morsels to tempt and to tide over the readers tending to the new political hybrids that may be possible and may be necessary to advance social change. Next to Godliness, however, will mainly interest and satisfy scholars who specialize in the study of the politics and thinking of urban Progressives.

Zachary Falck

Pittsburgh, PA

COPYRIGHT 2008 Journal of Social History
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning