The New American Nation series

Professor Hicks has spread before us the whole social and economic scene, and his luminous pages reflect to us the importance of such institutions as the automobile, the movies, and the radio.

This volume, one of a long series of studies in American history, deals almost exclusively with the years 1890 to 1900. It is essentially concerned with the politics of the decade, with the economic history of the period, with efforts to reform and improve many areas of the existing society, and finally with the new burst of territorial expansion resulting in part from the Spanish-American War.

Analyzes the social, political, and economic conditions in America between Reconstruction and the beginning of the great depression of the 1890's.

Covering the crucial years from the winning of independence to the creation of the federal government, The Forging of the Union may be considered a sequel to Richard B. Morris's Bancroft Award-winning book, The Peacemakers. Reexamining an enormous fund of original sources and the latest monographs, Morris treats the Confederation interlude as an extraordinary, if brief, period of trial and experimentation. Grave doubts were entertained on a wide variety of issues: the survival of an American union, perpetuation of republican values, the power of a strengthened central government to deal with the great European states, prosperity, sectional tensions, and secessionist murmurings. Would a durable union in fact perpetuate a government by the elite to the detriment of the common people? - Back cover.

Devoted to features that typified the formative years in America, the current book examines the ways these features became transformed.

Mr. Nye makes vividly clear the period's underlying patterns of thought, indicating the profound influence of European Romanticism, although American experience itself precluded the Old World's pessimism; how new discoveries in science were gradually wrecking the grand Newtonian scheme of the universe; and how all these changes affected religion, manners, education and the arts.

Summarizes the development of intellectual life in such areas as religion, literature, education, and social thought in the first 150 years of the American colonies.

Here is English society and government on the eve of the great migration to America. The Crown, the courts, Parliament, the church and the university, town and country, etc. are all brought to life in a book which captures the inner character of the English people of the 17th century.

"This book is designed as an over-all summary of colonial Spanish-American history. It deals with a longer chronological period than do most other volumes of the North American Nation series, and its treatment is more comprehensive and general. With respect to emphasis and point of view, I have sought to keep in mind both the requirements of a historical survey and the particular interests of readers in the United States." [Preface].