Apostle of Human Progress

Edward C. Rafferty is assistant professor of social science at Boston University.

• Chapter 1 AcknowledgmentsChapter 2 Introduction: A Life Apart From Circumstantial ThingsChapter 3 Self-Made Men, 1841-1862Chapter 4 An Equal Chance in the Race of Life, 1861-1870Chapter 5 The Land of Birds and Flowers, 1870-1879Chapter 6 Restless Skepticism, 1880-1883Chapter 7 A True National Philosophy, 1883-1887Chapter 8 The Great Social Problem, 1886-1893Chapter 9 Spencer-Smashing at Washington, 1894-1900Chapter 10 Gulliver Among the Lilliputians, 1900-1913Chapter 11 Conclusion: Glimpses of the Cosmos

Edward C. Rafferty has done an important service by writing this new intellectual biography of Lester Frank Ward, once known as the father of American Sociology. Rafferty presents the most comprehensive and balanced view of the life and work of this giant of American social thought of the late nineteenth and early-twentieth century that has appeared to date.