The Shaping of Modern America

From the Preface:

Americans in the years between the Civil War and the First World War lived in a nation quite different form that of their fathers - a nation where traditional ideas of democracy were modified by the values of a new industrial and urban society. The most important change was the burgeoning of industrial and financial corporations controlling nation-wide industries and supplanting the small, locally owned factories and businesses around which the national economy had been constructed. In addition, American life was fundamentally altered by other far-reaching developments: the passing of the frontier and much of the old West; the eclipsing of countryside and farm by city and factory; the dramatic improvement of communication through the telephone and transcontinental railroads; the new blood added to American stock by a flood of new immigrants; the formation of large-sale labor unions; and the emergence of the United States as a world power.

This book endeavors to recount and explain that experience. It examines both the aspirations and achievements of the American people in these years. It examines, too, the ideas, the institutions, and the processes that affected these hopes and accomplishments.