Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society: Volume Two~From the Gilded Age to the Present

American Social History Project

ISBN 10: 0679730222 / ISBN 13: 9780679730224

Published by Pantheon Books, New York, 1992

About this Item

Very Good + condition Softcover Signed by one of the Authors, Stephen Brier on the Half-Title page. Includes numerous b/w illustrations, Sources and Index, 723 pages. The exception to the condition is p/o gift inscription on the Half-Title page and the front top corner is creased for the first 70 pages. Seller Inventory # 005585

Bibliographic Details

Title: Who Built America?: Working People and the ...

Publisher: Pantheon Books, New York

Publication Date: 1992

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Very Good +

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

At last, American history is more than presidents and robber barons, elections and battles, names and dates to memorize. Who Built America? is about working Americans -- artisans, servants, slaves, farm families, laborers, women working in the home, factory hands, and office clerks -- who played crucial roles in shaping modern America: what they thought, what they did, and what happened to them.

The central focus of this two-volume history of the United States is the changing nature of the work that built, sustained, and transformed American society over the course of almost four centuries. It depicts the ways working people affected and were affected by the economic, social, cultural, and political processes that together make up the national experience. The result is a path-breaking integration of the history of community, family, gender roles, race, and ethnicity into the more familiar history of U.S. politics and economic development.

Volume One takes the reader through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the great railroad strike of 1877. Volume Two continues the story from the expansion of industrial capitalism during the Gilded Age and the rise of movements of opposition, through the decades of world war, depression, and industrial unionism, to the dramatic growth of U.S. military and economic power in the postwar era and the continuing struggle over the meaning of America in the contemporary era.

From the Back Cover:

"Who Built America? is an extremely insightful and thoughtful compendium of social and labor history, skillfully interwoven with a far more critical than usual political history of the nation. It is a gracefully written chronicle that will serve as something of a counter-textbook, an antidote to conventional treatments that have generally given short shrift to a large segment of the population..."

-- Alex Keyssar, Duke University, in The Nation

"This is an amazing job. The text reads as if it were the work of a single, eloquent, spirited and committed writer. The material is rich and interesting, the language forceful and compelling...the production of the book does it proud."

-- Roger Kennedy, Director, National Museum of American History