Joseph J. Thorndike (Director of Tax History Project and Contributing Editor, Tax Analysts) has published The Origins of the American Income Tax:  The Revenue Act of 1894 and Its Aftermath, 107 Tax Notes 1181 (2005), a review of a book of the same name, by Richard J. Joseph (University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business), also available on the Tax Analysts web site as Doc 2005-11361, 2005 TNT 104-41:

Richard Joseph has written a worthy history of the contentious tax debates that swirled around the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on the stillborn income tax of 1894, he sets out to explain the sociopolitical origins of the modern tax regime….

[T]his is a fine book in many important respects. Joseph offers a close, nuanced reading of the debate over income taxation as it unfolded in the last years of the 19th century. He successfully illuminates the moral and political case for progressive taxation. In doing so, he helps bolster the proposition — advanced by a range of recent scholars — that those ideas have been central to the development of American taxation.

(For prior TaxProf Blog coverage of the book, see here.)