Twice during the period a permanent _modus vivendi_ seemed to have been agreed upon, in the Jacksonian Democracy of 1828, and in the Pierce organization of 1852, combinations of South and West which rested on the big plantation system with slavery underlying, and on the small farmer vote of the West charged always with the potential revolt which democracy connotes. While these subjects receive the careful attention of the author, the "way out," and the national expansion of the Polk Administration, are none the less carefully studied. But aside from the sharp and challenging problems of the time, an earnest effort has been made to describe the cultural life of the people, the pastimes, the religious revivals, the literary and artistic output of the exuberant America of 1830 to 1860. The Civil War and its attendant ills are compressed into relatively small space, though here, too, the effort is made to include all that is vital. In like manner Professor Paxson gives much space to the "interests" which came to dominate the country soon after the cessation of hostilities in 1865. The business and the greater social tendencies of the _post-bellum_ period had become evident during the decade just preceding the war. For this reason, the author reaches back into the midst of the conflict to take up the thread of his narrative. The economic conditions and changes of 1861 to 1865 are therefore treated in connection with the great issues of the seventies and eighties--the protective tariff and "big business." The money question, railway regulation, corruption in public affairs, never absent from our national life, are the chief themes of Professor Paxson's book. But while the _motif_ of the volume is prosperity, business success, and commercial expansion, space has been found for sympathetic accounts of the dominating personalities of the time,--for Blaine and Cleveland; for Bryan, Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. And as is fitting, the leaders of the industrial and intellectual interests of the time also receive attention.