The Impact of Poverty and Progress on the Generation of Historians Trained in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s

Abstract

In an era of extreme specialization among American historians, it is rare for a monograph to have had the major impact of Poverty and Progress. While there have been previous studies of social mobility, American ethnic groups, and urban communities, Thernstrom’s study was pathbreaking in his use of research techniques and interpretation, and it established a major agenda for the “New Social History.” The questions he raised and his success in writing history “from the bottom up” captured the imagination of the new generation of historians who attended graduate school in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His ability to explore the experience of the inarticulate working class drew the attention of radical or New Left historians who were seeking to write a different type of labor history that focused less on unions and more on working-class culture, as well as of the traditionally oriented consensus historians who wanted to expand the horizons of social and cultural history to encompass the experiences of the greatest numbers of Americans. Thernstrom’s impact on the latest cohort of historians was felt in their methodology and their studies of ethnic subcommunities, working-class culture, and geographic and social mobility.