The Shaping of Modern America

In the years between the Civil War and the First World War, Americans lived in a nation quite different from that of their parents, the values of a burgeoning industrial and urban society transforming traditional notions of democracy. At the same time, other far-reaching developments--the eclipsing of countryside and farm by city and factory, substantial changes in communications and transportation, revolutionary innovations in agriculture, a large wave of immigration, the rise of labour unions, and the emergence of the United States as a world power--gave these years a distinctive character and established the foundations of modern America. Revised to reflect the latest scholarship on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, this classic text remains a great choice as a core text for courses in the Gilded Age or as a highly useful supplement for the US history survey.

Preface to the Third Edition ix 1 The Rise of Industrial America 1 2 The Last West and the New South 19 3 The Politics of Dead Center 39 4 The Agrarian Revolt 60 5 American Culture in the Gilded Age 80 6 American Society in the Industrial Age 96 7 America’s New Manifest Destiny 121 8 The Great Reform Era 148 9 Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism 173 10 Taft and Progressive Insurgency 190 11 Woodrow Wilson and the New Freedom 209 12 The United States as a World Power, 1899-1916 228 13 America’s road to War: 1914-1917 252 14 America in World War I 273 15 Wilson and the Versailles Treaty 292 Index 315 Photographs follow page 172