THE AGE OF ACRIMONY How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915

This audiobook about the post-Civil War era of fervid political partisanship will feel very familiar to 21st-century listeners. Narrator Johnny Heller adds a folksy newscaster's delivery that keeps up the narrative pace. Told through the lives of Philadelphia Congressman William Kelley, who was a friend of Abraham Lincoln, and his socialist daughter, Florence, the story recounts their fight for the working man, women's votes, racial equality, and, in Florie's case, for the abolition of child labor. As industrialism moves into the heartland, both politics and journalism come under the influence of big business and its demands. Listeners will be fascinated to see how a period of enormous change, unrest, and bitter rancor affected, and mirrors, our own age. L.W.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2022]