Press

The New York State Museum will welcome Dr. Robert Chiles, author of The Revolution of ’28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal on March Thursday, March 22, 2018 at 7:00 PM for a free talk and book signing. The Revolution of ’28 explores the career of New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith. Following the talk, Dr. Chiles will be available to sign his book, which will be available for purchase from the museum gift shop, or can be ordered from Cornell University Press. Artifacts and ephemera from Al Smith’s career from the New York State Museum’s historical collections will also be on display during the event, which is organized by the New York State Museum with additional support by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government of SUNY.

In The Revolution of ’28, Robert Chiles peers into Al Smith’s work and uncovers a distinctive strain of American progressivism that resonated among urban, ethnic, working-class Americans in the early twentieth century. The book charts the rise of that progressivism during Smith’s early years as a state legislator through his time as governor of New York in the 1920s, before proceeding to a revisionist narrative of the 1928 presidential campaign, exploring the ways in which Smith’s gubernatorial progressivism was presented to a national audience. 

Dr. Chiles is a lecturer at the University of Maryland, focusing his work on U.S. politics and society from the Gilded Age to World War II. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland in 2012 and has been awarded grants and residencies by the New York State Library and the New York State Archives Partnership Trust, as well as the New Jersey Historical Commission.

The State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Located at 222 Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It is closed on the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the Museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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