Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold wrote the essays that constitute Culture and Anarchy between 1867 and 1869, a time of rapid social change and uncertainty. Defining culture as "the best that has been thought and said," Arnold offers concrete suggestions for its role as a corrective to the chaos of materialism, industrialism, and self-interest. Acclaimed by Commentary as "the classic defense of high culture against the depredations of modernity,"...

In 1901, as America tallied its gains from a period of unprecedented imperial expansion, an assassin's bullet shattered the nation's confidence. This book is the story of the momentous years leading up to that event, and of the very different paths that brought together two figures of the era: President William McKinley and anarchist Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who murdered him. The two men seemed to live in eerily parallel Americas. The United States...