Robert W. Cherny is professor of history at San Francisco State University, where he has been a member of the history faculty since 1971. In 1995--96, he served as president of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He was the Distinguished Fullbright Lecturer at Moscow State University in 1996 and held a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1992--93. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1972 and his B.A. from the University of Nebraska in 1965. His books include A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (1985, 1994), Populism, Progressivism, and the Transformation of Nebraska Politics , 1885--1915 (1981), and, with William Issel, San Francisco, 1865--1932: Politics, Power, and Urban Development (1986). His essays include "William Jennings Bryan and the Historians," Nebraska History (1996), "the Democratic Party in the Era of William Jennings Bryan" in Democrats and the American Idea: A Bicentennial Appraisal (1992), and "Willa Cather and the Populists," Great Plains Quarterly (1983). He is also co-author of Making America: A History of the United States (1995).