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Transforming America in 1903: A Landmark Year in the History of the United States book cover

1st Edition

Transforming America in 1903 A Landmark Year in the History of the United States

By Steven E. Siry Copyright 2026
408 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

408 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

408 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
1903 was a seminal but overlooked year in the development of the United States. Through an analytical narrative of 31 historic events, this book examines how these 12 months would prefigure and shape significant transformation in the U.S.A. for over a century to come. In the late nineteenth century, America emerged as an increasingly urbanized and industrialized society connected to an informal... Read more

Part I: Technology

Introduction to Part I: Technology

1. The Wright Brothers’ Conquest of the Air

2. The First Around-the-World Telegraph Communication

3. The First Transcontinental Automobile Trip

4. The Birth of Modern Air Conditioning

Part I: Questions to Consider

Part II: Culture

Introduction to Part II: Culture

5. The Great Train Robbery as the First Blockbuster Movie

6. The National Pastime and the First World Series

7. The New Colossus and the Statue of Liberty

8. Filming the Electrocution of Topsy the Elephant

9. America’s First Lone-Gunman Random Mass Shooting

Part II: Questions to Consider

Part III: Literature

Introduction to Part III: Literature

10. W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk

11. Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life

12. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Home

13. Jack London’s The People of the Abyss

14. Henry James’s The Ambassadors

Part III: Questions to Consider

Part IV Reform

Introduction to Part IV: Reform

15. Theodore Roosevelt and the First Federal Bird Reserve

16. Harvey Washington Wiley’s “Poison Squad”

17. The Founding of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography

18. Carry A. Nation’s Prohibition Crusade in Washington, D.C.

19. America’s Deadliest Single-Building Fire

20. Robert La Follette’s Statewide Direct Primary Law

Part IV: Questions to Consider

Part V: Business

Introduction to Part V: Business

21. Walter Dill Scott’s The Theory of Advertising

22. The Founding of the Ford Motor Company

23. Gillette Safety Razors and an Emerging Disposable Culture

24. The Founding of the Du Pont Company’s Experimental Station

25. Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Scientific Management

Part V: Questions to Consider

Part VI: Labor

Introduction to Part VI: Labor

26. The Precedent of Labor Arbitration by Federal Intervention

27. The Japanese-Mexican Labor Association

28. The Founding of the National Women’s Trade Union League

Part VI: Questions to Consider

Part VII: Power

Introduction to Part VII: Power

29. The Lottery Case and the Regulating of Interstate Commerce

30. Leasing Guantanamo Bay

31. Acquiring the Panama Canal Zone

Part VII: Questions to Consider

Epilogue

Biography

Steven E. Siry is Professor of History at Baldwin Wallace University. His previous books include Liberty’s Fallen Generals: Leadership and Sacrifice in the American War of Independence (2012), Greene: Revolutionary General (2006), and DeWitt Clinton and the American Political Economy: Sectionalism, Politics, and Republican Ideology, 1787–1828 (1990).

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