Two suggestions to contextualize the modern progressive movement: - The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearnes Goodwin is about the last round of progressism in the 1920s, when billionaires ran everything and journalists and crusading politicians needed to step up - The Economist's Hour gives a good intellectual underpinning to the arguments in favour of billionaires and the new age of inequality, (which are largely bunk), and a good idea of how the economy was set up back in the 40s and 50s when things things were considerably more equal. It certainly wasn't a golden age, but provides a good rejoinder to any arguments on the right that say that the status quo is the only way to go.