·         Philip F. Gura, Transcendentalism and Social Reform

·         Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (1948): “William Jennings Bryan: Democrat as Revivalist”, chapter 8;; “Theodore Roosevelt: Conservative as Progressive” Chapter 9; “Woodrow Wilson: The Conservative as Liberal”

·         Eugene Debs,  "Address to the American Railway Union" (1894)

·         William Jennings Bryan, “The Cross of Gold Speech” (1896)

·         Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Unguarded Gates” (1895)

·         John Wanamaker, "The Business of Selling", the Siegel and Cooper Department Store (1877)

·         Thorstein Veblen, excerpts from Theory of the Leisure Class (1890) on 'conspicuous consumption'

·         Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888) (A Sci-Fi Utopian Liberal Vision of the Future)

·         Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1888) Documenting the Other Half (UVA) excerpt New York City Tenement Life, 1890

·         Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1891); "An Experiment in Misery" (1893),  "The Blue Hotel" (1898); "The Open Boat" (1899); “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (1898)

·         Jack London, "The Law of Life" (1901) "To Build a Fire"; The Call of the Wild (1903)

·         Hamlin Garland, "Under the Lion's Paw" (1889) 

·         Frank Norris, from Vandover the Brute (1894-95)

·         Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)

·         Anzia Yezierska, "The Lost Beautifulness"; "How I Found America" from Hungry Hearts (1920); Breadgivers (1925)
Jane Addams, "First Days at Hull-House" (1910); "The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" (1892),  excerpts from Twenty Years at Hull House (1910), "A Modern Lear" (1912);  Ray Stannard Baker, "Hull House and the Ward Boss," 1898 

·         Upton Sinclair, The Condemned-Meat Industry (1906);  The Jungle (1906)

·         Lincoln Steffens, excerpts from The Shame of the Cities (1904); "USDA Government Inspected", Chapter Nine of After the Fact