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Ragging It: Getting Ragtime Into History (and some history into ragtime) ©

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H. Loring White is a retired history professor with a deep but unflinchingly honest love for America's Progressive Era, its accomplishments, the changes it brought to our lives, and its uplifting, sexy, innovative music. In this engrossing book, White takes us on a compelling cultural and historical tour of America in the two decades leading up to WWI. Ragtime music and the lives of ragtime era musicians are highlighted, but White is also after the big stories--who we were, who we are, and how things came to be. Hence there are chapters about everything from Teddy Roosevelt to transportation, prostitution, race relations, amusement parks, and vaudeville. As overreaching as this may seem, by combining multiple historical threads in alternating chapters, and by pulling no punches, White creates an exceptionally clear picture of this not-so-distant era. At the same time, he nicely pulls together and clarifies much of the best research and current thinking about ragtime music and ragtime musicians. It is to our benefit and delight that he has achieved this in a manner that is well documented, concise, and highly readable.