But Wiebe didn’t have the evidence to sustain many of the assertions that fed his thesis. Many of the things which he said happened in the Gilded Age had happened earlier and other things didn’t happen at all. Nonetheless, it’s a great feat of storytelling to fit so many disparate details into a simple framework. Even though I disagree with Wiebe, I always keep my eye on The Search for Order as a model of historical writing.
Recorded Eve Gerber, Five Books interview, published transcript, 26 March 2021 source ↗