Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open intiative. Past Action: Finding Shared Agency in Modernist Histories by Kelley Wagers offers a timely and thought-provoking reconsideration of how history functions in both literary and social life. At a moment when debates over the value, relevance, and political implications of historical study dominate public discourse, this book returns to a formative period in the early twentieth century to uncover how writers and historians grappled with similar concerns. Drawing on a range of American modernist texts published between 1918 and 1938, Wagers argues that history is not merely a record of past events but a dynamic social practice through which people recognize one another, construct meaning together, and enact collective agency.