Professor McGerr is historian of the modern United States, with particular interest in issues of power, ideology, culture, and the relationship of public and private life. His first book, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (Oxford University Press), is a social and cultural history of the transformation of grass-roots political participation. His most recent book, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (The Free Press/Simon & Schuster), traces the origin of modern liberalism to the transformation of the intimate, daily lives of the different social classes in industrial United States. He is currently writing ‘The Public Be Damned': The Vanderbilts and the Unmaking of the Ruling Class (forthcoming, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux), a study of seven generations of what was once the wealthiest family in the world.

He received the Distinguished Visiting Scholar award from the University System of Taiwan; Distinguished Lecturer from the Organization of American Historians; Sylvia E. Bowman Teaching Award, from Indiana University; and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

His research interests are in Modern American History and American political, cultural and social history.