This gracefully written text introduces students to various effects of the Industrial Revolution on American society during the period between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century. The narrative and associated documents are meant to stimulate class discussion of this fundamental dimension of the Gilded Age, while freeing instructors to introduce material on social and cultural themes less
easily treated in linear narrative form--gender, race, immigration, westward expansion, imperialism, literature, and the arts. The twenty-five readings include documents that have not been, or at least have been infrequently, reproduced for instructional purposes. A selected bibliography of 176 books published since 1980, topically arranged, provides suggestions for further reading and possible research projects. |