1 Newman, Katherine S. and Jacobs, Elisabeth S., Who Cares? Public Ambivalence and Government Activism from the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 113–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 119.

2 David Huyssen, “We won't get out of the Second Gilded Age the way we got out of the first,” Vox, Apr. 1, 2019.

3 “In Defense of Home and Hearth: Mary Lease Raises Hell Among Farmers,” History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5304 (accessed Jan. 2, 2020). For an overview of Lease's life and activism, see Orr, Brooke Speer, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Gendered Discourse and Populist Party Politics in Gilded Age America,” Kansas History 29 (Dec. 2006): 246–65Google Scholar.

4 Orr, “Mary Elizabeth Lease,” 250, 251, 255–57, 262–65.

5 See for example “A Woman's Work: Mary Lease Celebrates Women Populists,” http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5303 (accessed Jan. 2, 2020). See also “In Defense of Home and Hearth.”

6 To be sure, PBS's 2018 documentary The Gilded Age features late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century images of women workers. It mentions that women joined labor unions and were among those who “proudly identified themselves as working class.”

7 The film's treatment of immigration is stronger as is its consideration of race—at least when it comes to African Americans.

8 Kriste Lindenmeyer's 2002 review essay discussed work about women, reform, and urban space within both the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era in JGAPE's inaugural issue; Catherine Cocks's thoroughgoing critique of historiographical “assumptions about both Victorian repression and modern [sexual] liberation” appeared in JGAPE's fifth volume as a meditation on Progressive Era history. See Lindenmeyer, Kriste, “Citizenship, Gender, and Urban Space in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 (Jan. 2002): 95–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cocks, Catherine, “Rethinking Sexuality in the Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5 (Apr. 2006): 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For additional commentary, see Perry, Elisabeth Israels, “Men Are from the Gilded Age, Women Are from the Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 (Jan. 2002): 25–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Wheeler, Leigh Ann, “Inventing Sexuality: Ideologies, Identities, and Practices in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” in A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, eds. Nichols, Christopher McKnight and Unger, Nancy C. (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 102–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 102.

10 See for example Ellen Carol DuBois and Linda Gordon's classic article, “Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in Nineteenth-Century Feminist Sexual Thought,” Feminist Studies 9 (Spring 1983): 7–25. It is worth underscoring that this article was produced during the “sex wars” that animated the late 1970s and early 1980s.

11 Whereas Catherine Cocks emphasizes the need to “devise a more satisfactory alternative to the Victorian-to-modern framework,” Leigh Ann Wheeler contends that, “the framework remains useful precisely because it has inspired scholars to expose its mythical aspects while exploring the many possibilities for sexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” See Cocks, “Rethinking Sexuality,” 94; Wheeler, “Inventing Sexuality,” 111. See also Kimberly A. Hamlin, “Gender,” in A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 87–101, esp. 87.

12 Leon Fink makes a case for thinking in terms of a “long Gilded Age”: “…I currently prefer the option of ‘The Long Gilded Age’ for the entire GAPE (for convenience, let's round the years to 1880–1920). Critically inquisitive (if still inevitably somewhat pejorative), the phrase usefully refocuses attention on bursting social inequalities as well as the political management of industrial capitalism across a crucial and formative period of the nation's development.” See Fink, Leon, The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and Lessons of a New World Order (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 2.

13 Importantly, Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil stress that, “[a]lthough women had been working for wages since the 1830s, the centrality and permanence of female wage earners were slow to be recognized. Not until 1890 did the U.S. census identify or count working women with any precision.” See DuBois, Ellen Carol and Dumenil, Lynn, Through Women's Eyes: An American History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005), 285Google Scholar.

14 See Hunter, Tera W., To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 74–97Google Scholar.

15 Nell Cusack, “City Slave Girls” (1888), www.wwnorton.com/college/history/foner2/contents/ch16/documents07.asp (accessed Jan. 2, 2020).

16 For useful statistics on this front, see Hamlin, “Gender,” 92. For a discussion about women being seen as particularly suited to typing, see DuBois and Dumenil, Through Women's Eyes, 286–87.

17 Cocks, “Rethinking Sexuality,” 110–11.

18 For recent examples of such analogies appearing in popular periodicals, see Lily Rothman, “How American Inequality in the Gilded Age Compares to Today,” Time, February 5, 2018; Rick Hampson, “America's Second Gilded Age: More class envy than class conflict,” USA Today, May 17, 2018. For a recent article that draws parallels between the Gilded Age and present-day “new donor classes,” see Elizabeth Kolbert, “Shaking the Foundations,” New Yorker, Aug. 27, 2018, 30–34.

19 I am indebted to Linda Gordon in terms of thinking about (and referring to) the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as “high capitalism.”

20 See Karl Marx, Grundrisse—Notebook V: The Chapter on Capital, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch10.htm (accessed Jan. 2, 2020).

21 Harvey notes that he “use[s] the word ‘compression’ because a strong case can be made that the history of capitalism has been characterized by speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us.” Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1990), 240Google Scholar.

22 Ian Tyrrell, “Connections, Networks, and the Beginnings of a Global America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 381–98, esp. 382.

23 Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth and Sugrue, Thomas J., These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890s to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), 536–88Google Scholar. For recent, popular ruminations on “late capitalism” or “late stage capitalism,” see Kimberly Amadeo, “Late Stage Capitalism, Its Characteristics, and Why the Term Is Trending,” The Balance, December 14, 2019; Annie Lowrey, “Why the Phrase ‘Late Capitalism’ Is Suddenly Everywhere,” The Atlantic, May 1, 2017.

24 Mandel, Ernest, Der Spätkapitalismus (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972)Google Scholar. Reprinted as Late Capitalism, trans. Joris De Bres (London: Verso, 1978), 562, 9.

25 Grace Blakely, “The Latest Incarnation of Capitalism,” Jacobin, Sept. 5, 2018.

26 Harman, Chris, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx (London: Bookmarks Publications, 2009), 12, 300, 280Google Scholar. Significantly, Harman critiqued Mandel's Late Capitalism. See Chris Harman, “Mandel's Late Capitalism,” International Socialism 2 (July 1978).

27 Blakely, “The Latest Incarnation of Capitalism.”

28 Newman and Jacobs, Who Cares?, 113–48, esp. 113, 119; Martin, Wendy and Tichi, Cecelia, eds., Best of Times, Worst of Times: Contemporary American Short Stories from the New Gilded Age (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 5Google Scholar.

29 Mitchell, Michele and Shibusawa, Naoko, “Introduction,” in Gender, Imperialism and Global Exchanges, eds. Miescher, Stephan F., Mitchell, Michele, and Shibusawa, Naoko (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 1–21Google Scholar, esp. 3. Shibusawa and I also point out that, “[f]eminist Marxists such as Silvia Federici insist that we must consider gender as another means of assessing how much a person [is] alienated from her labour.” See Mitchell and Shibusawa, “Introduction,” 4; Federici, Silvia, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Automedia, 2004)Google Scholar.

30 Newman and Jacobs, Who Cares?, 119; Bartels, Larry M., Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, second ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 1–2, 7–16Google Scholar. See also Tirado, Linda, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2014)Google Scholar; Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001)Google Scholar.

31 D'Emilio, John and Freedman, Estelle B., Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, third ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 301–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hays, Sharon, Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Roberts, Dorothy, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Pantheon, 1997)Google Scholar; Faludi, Susan, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown, 1991)Google Scholar. See also Gilmore and Sugrue, These United States, 536–88; Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed, 213; Sarah Jones, “Lessons from the Gilded Age,” New Republic, June 13, 2018. For arguments about gender, recession, and male unemployment circa 2008, see Zachary Karabell, “We Are Not in This Together,” Newsweek, Apr. 20, 2009, 30; April Patrick Johnson and Yvonne Zipp, “Job Losses Hit Black Men Hardest,” Christian Science Monitor, Mar. 16, 2009, 25; David Zinczenko, “Decline of the American Male,” USA Today, June 17, 2009, 10A; Derek Thompson, “It's Not Just a Recession. It's a Mancession!,” Atlantic Monthly, July 9, 2009. For a contemporaneous assertion that women's unemployment was actually rising in similar proportion to men's, see Linda Hirschman, “Where Are the New Jobs for Women?,” New York Times, Dec. 9, 2008, A35.

32 Luke Philip Plottica, “The Return of the Forgotten Man: Refurbishing Symbols of the Gilded Age,” Public Seminar, Nov. 20, 2017, www.publicseminar.org/2017/11/the-return-of-the-forgotten-man (accessed Jan. 2, 2020).

33 Plottica, “The Return of the Forgotten Man”; Orleck, Annelise, “Wage-Earning Women,” A Companion to American Women's History, ed. Hewitt, Nancy A. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 2005), 250–73, esp. 269Google Scholar.

34 I do not, of course, mean to imply that “people of color” and “women” are mutually exclusive categories.

35 Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed, 79n8; Gilmore and Sugrue, These United States, 536–37.

36 Nadasen, Premilla, Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015), 7Google Scholar.

37 Liza Mundy, “The New Power Wives of Capitol Hill,” Politico, special issue on the “New Gilded Age” (July/Aug. 2014), www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-new-power-wives-of-capitol-hill-108012 (accessed Jan. 2, 2020). The one article about sexuality in this special issue explores the dissonance experienced by gay staffers in George W. Bush's White House; see Timothy J. Burger, “Inside George W. Bush's Closet,” Politico, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/inside-george-w-bushs-closet-108016#.U6vxUI1yF8Y (accessed Jan. 2, 2020).

38 D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 345.

39 Bowers v. Hardwick is the Supreme Court decision that refused to affirm the right of privacy for gay men who engaged in consensual oral sex. Here, I do not wish to claim that the “repressive strain” of sexual politics that Comstock embodied went unchallenged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But, as D'Emilio and Freedman point out, whereas “[t]he popular press frequently ridiculed Comstock,” commentators “never undermined his political power.” See D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 164.

40 Miller, Patricia, Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the “Powerless” Woman Who Took on Washington (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2018)Google Scholar. See also Anna Diamond, “The Court Case That Inspired the Gilded Age's #MeToo Moment,” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 2018.

41 For an assertion that we are now in a third Gilded Age, see Kurth, James, “The Foreign Policy of Plutocracies,” The American Interest 7, no. 2 (2011)Google Scholar.

42 James Livingston, “The Myth of a ‘Second Gilded Age,’” The Chronicle Review, Jan. 31, 2016, www.chronicle.com/article/The-Myth-of-a-Second-Gilded/235072/#.W5QINoa6CRM.email (accessed Jan. 2, 2020); a version of the article appeared in print on Feb. 5, 2016.

43 Cocks, “Rethinking Sexuality in the Progressive Era”; Jones, “Lessons from the Gilded Age.”

44 Jones, “Lessons from the Gilded Age.”

45 Akuno additionally contends that it will “take a few generations to undo the century of conspicuous consumption that has been advanced and promoted by late capitalism.” See “‘It's Eco-Socialism or Death’: An Interview with Kali Akuno,” Jacobin, Feb. 15, 2019.

46 Orleck, Annelise, “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018)Google Scholar.