I'm currently studying for comprehensive exams for my PhD and while I'm very comfortable with colonial America to the end of Reconstruction, the 20th century is not my forte, particularly the social and political aspects of the early 20th century outside of the context of American Civil Rights. Any suggestions regarding the best authors to read and the most current research in this era would be very helpful. Thanks!
If you're studying for comps (good luck!) you'll probably want to check out the following books:
Robert H. Wiebe, The Search For Order, 1877-1920 (Hill and Wang, 1966).
Alan Trachtenburg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (Hill and Wang, 1982, 2007).
Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America (Vintage, 1977).
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-Of-The-Century New York (Temple University Press, 1986).
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (UNC Press, 1996)
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Nell Painter, Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era (WW Norton, 1987, 2008).
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Belknap, 2000).
To be sure, not all of these books constitute the most current research on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era - you will see that some of them are quite old. But they are generally books you should probably be familiar with (although your examiners, of course, will have the final say). I also recommend that you get yourself a copy of American History Now if you haven't already. It's a volume of historiographical essays that saved my bacon when I took my comps, and it contains a great section on the Gilded Age/Progressive Era.