Wall Street and the Fruited Plain: Money, Expansion, and Politics in the Gilded Age [Paperback]

Wall Street and the Fruited Plaindelves deep into the parody known today as the Gilded Age . The last decades of the 19th century saw both industrial and agricultural explosions in the United States. However, the base metal beneath this glittering fa?ade was comprised of sweat-soaked, underpaid laborers, many of whom had just splashed ashore from Europe's seething cauldrons.

In the early years of the period, the nation underwent the wrenching challenge of Reconstruction, nominally resolved in the compromise of 1877. In the Gilded Age, America expanded both internally and externally. The frontier moved from Kansas to California. Trappers, miners, cattlemen, and-finally-homesteaders, with the help of a burgeoning railroad network, fanned out across the central plains and the western plateaus. Wall Street dominated not only the economic and social life of the country, but the politics as well. A series of lackluster presidents between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt facilitated this dominion and by the end of Roosevelt's first Administration, America had become an adolescent headliner on the world stage.

James T. Wall'sWall Street and the Fruited Plainoffers a conventional overview of American history in the years 1865-1901, the Gilded Age . . .Wall Street and the Fruited Plainis filled with interesting nuggets of facts . . . Enterprise & Society

Wall provides a very nice historical overview of the period in a style that undergraduate students will find extremely acessible....Recommended. Two-star review. Choice Reviews

Part 1 SECTION I: RECONSTRUCTION, 1865-18771
Chapter 2 Chapter 1: Death of a President
Chapter 3 Chapter 2: Andrew Johnson on Stage
Chapter 4 Chapterl£,