America's Second Gilded Age: Jean Strouse

In the third episode of Endgame with Fintan O'Toole, the historian Jean Strouse discusses the parallels between our current American moment and the Gilded Age. She and O’Toole talk about the roots of our modern American institutions in the Gilded Age, when the country's business leaders imported cultural as well as financial capital, and relied greatly on migration. Looking at the origins of figures like J. Pierpont Morgan and Levi Strauss, Strouse examines how a kind of enlightened self-interest motivated the robber barons and industrial capitalists who set the course for much of the American twentieth century. 

Jean Strouse is the author, most recently, of Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers—about the painter's relationship to the family of Asher Wertheimer, a London art dealer who commissioned portraits of himself, his wife, and all ten of their children—as well as biographies of Alice James and J. Pierpont Morgan. She has written for the Review on subjects that range from Henry James to Sargent portraits to a late-life romance between Morgan and Lady Victoria Sackville to the Transatlantic cable. Strouse was the director of The New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers from 2003 to 2017, and began her career at TNYRB, where she worked as editorial assistant to Robert Silvers right after graduating from Radcliffe College.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our theme music is "Political World" by Bob Dylan, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

What is Endgame with Fintan O’Toole?

Join Fintan O’Toole, Advising Editor at The New York Review, as he and his guests discuss the great unraveling of the American order—and imagine what comes next.

Each week they’ll explore some of the major contradictions that have shaped the United States since its founding 250 years ago, looking closely at subjects that range from Civil War history to contemporary fiction, from Thomas Jefferson to Bernie Sanders, from Gilded Age monopolies to tech oligarchs. What can Shakespeare and Nazi Germany tell us about the current presidency? Making unexpected connections and always drawing out the human drama within complicated ideas, Fintan and his guests—including Annette Gordon-Reed, Ben Lerner, Colin Grant, Jean Strouse, and Dan Chiasson—take the best of New York Review essays and turn them into a conversation.

Endgame with Fintan O’Toole is a New York Review podcast.

Show Art: Jason Logan