When Good Government Meant Big Government

The years after World War I have often been seen as an era when Republican presidents and business leaders brought the growth of government in the United States to a sudden and emphatic halt. In When Good Government Meant Big Government , the historian Jesse Tarbert inverts the traditional story by revealing a forgotten effort by business-allied reformers to expand federal power—and how that effort was foiled by Southern Democrats and their political allies. Tarbert traces how a loose-knit coali