A very broad, balanced, accessible account of the Gilded Age (1865-1901) that includes all the recent scholarship on this period and offers a portrait of the economic, political, social and cultural history of the age. American resourcefulness is shown at its best and worst. Discusses how the conservatism of thought and radicalism of technological change remade the Gilded Age, and how society tempered the applications of each. So, too, are mainstream politics and religion. This is a rich, colorful narrative about a complex period in American history.