The turmoil that attended America's shift from a rural, agrarian society to an urban, industrial one, described with a highly readable combination of scholarly thoroughness and stylistic verve. A consistently engrossing, occasionally irreverent, always smoothly written history of America's painful entry into the modern age. -- Kirkus Reviews A vivid portrayal of people's history with the politics left in. With analytical cohesiveness, intellectual grasp and wit, Painter succeeds not only in integrating issues in Afro-American and women's history with the whole but also in relating the role and presence of the modern state to the trends in ordinary people's lives. A gripping and forceful narrative. -- Nancy F. Cott, Yale University Lucid and compelling. The first general treatment of this era that does full justice to the struggles of working people.

It will provide future historians with a good model for how to do narrative synthesis 'from the bottom up.' -- George M. Fredrickson, Stanford University.