Robert D. Johnston

Robert D. Johnston is associate professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the director of its Teaching of History program, and a co-editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. An extended version of this essay will appear in the journal’s July 2014 issue. Johnston’s book, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, 2003), seeks to redeem the populist politics of middling folks in U.S. history. He is currently working on a history of U.S. vaccination controversies.