What Era Of History May Best Predict 2018? A Holy Cross Professor Explains

Historians are known to look backward. But what can the lessons of the past tell us about our immediate future? HISTORY asked an expert panel, including Associate Professor of History and host of the In The Past Lane podcast Edward T. O’Donnell, to give their history-informed predictions for 2018.

O’Donnell says that we may be heading for a second Gilded Age – an unhappy return to the era between 1870 and 1900 marked by rising wealth inequality.

“Even a casual observer will see many similarities between the two eras. In addition to surging inequality, both are marked by weak presidents, intense political partisanship, fear of corporate power (especially its influence in politics), vehement anti-immigrant sentiment and efforts to restrict voting rights,” O’Donnell says.

But a further look at U.S. history may reveal reasons for optimism, O’Donnell says, as the Gilded Age was followed by an era of “unprecedented reform of society, politics and the economy.”

To see O’Donnell’s predictions for the presidency and the press, visit HISTORY.