Charles Postel is an American historian and professor at San Francisco State University. He studied at Laney College in Oakland before receiving his B.A. in history from UC-Berkeley in 1995, and his Ph.D. in history from UC-Berkeley in 2002. Postel's scholarship focuses on politics and social movements in the United States during the
Gilded Age and
Progressive Era. He is best known for his book
The Populist Vision'' about which the Longview Institute said,
Elegantly written, meticulously researched, ''The Populist Vision'' is an enthralling history of the movement that created the most pervasive political impulse in American politics. Postel’s book has won both the Frederick Jackson Turner and Bancroft awards, which it justly deserves. His work also helps us to understand the actual Populist Vision that lies behind the superficial and shallow rhetoric to which we’ve been subjected during this election year.
His most recent book
Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866-1896 is about the powerful social movements unleashed by the Civil War and their often clashing claims to racial, sexual, and economic equality. In her review of the book, Crystal N. Feimster, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Yale University, wrote:
Equality is a deeply researched, beautifully written, and brilliantly argued history of the epic struggle to define the meaning of equality in post-Civil War America. This magnificent portrait of the farmers' Grange, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the Knights of Labor is filled with fresh insights into the social movements that took root during Reconstruction and blossomed in the Gilded Age. Confronting some of the most difficult questions in American history, Postel adds new dimensions to our understanding of the racial, gender, and class inequalities that continue to shape our social and political landscape."
Awards
* 2008
Bancroft Prize
* 2008
Frederick Jackson Turner Award
The Frederick Jackson Turner Award, is given each year by the Organization of American Historians for an author's first book on American history.
It was started in 1959, by Mississippi Valley Historical Association, as the Prize Studies Award.
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Works
*
*
"What We Talk about When We Talk about Populism,"Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Fall 2017, vol. 37, no. 2
Trump and Sanders Are Both Populists, What Does Populism Mean?"The American Historian (August 2016)
References
External links
SFSU Department of History Faculty
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
University of California, Berkeley alumni
San Francisco State University faculty
Living people
1954 births
Bancroft Prize winners
American male non-fiction writers
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