Robert W. Cherny is professor of history at SanFrancisco State University, where he has been a member of thehistory faculty since 1971. In 1995 96, he served aspresident of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age andProgressive Era. He was the Distinguished Fullbright Lecturer atMoscow State University in 1996 and held a fellowship from theNational Endowment for the Humanities in 1992 93. He receivedhis Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1972 and his B.A. from theUniversity of Nebraska in 1965. His books include A RighteousCause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (1985, 1994),Populism, Progressivism, and the Transformation of NebraskaPolitics, 1885 1915 (1981), and, with William Issel,San Francisco, 1865 1932: Politics, Power, and UrbanDevelopment (1986). His essays include William JenningsBryan and the Historians, Nebraska History (1996), the Democratic Party in the Era of William JenningsBryan in Democrats and the American Idea: ABicentennial Appraisal (1992), and Willa Catherand the Populists, Great Plains Quarterly (1983). Heis also co-author of Making America: A History of the UnitedStates (1995).