Gilbert Seldes, the author of The Stammering Century, writes:

This book is not a record of the major events in Ameri-can history during
the nineteenth century. It is concerned with minor movements, with the
cults and manias of that period. Its personages are fanatics, and radicals,
and mountebanks. Its intention is to connect these secondary movements
and figures with the primary forces of the century, and to supply a
background in American history for the Prohibitionists and the Pente-costalists;
the diet-faddists and the dealers in mail-order...