Section I : reconstruction, 1865-1877
Andrew Johnson on stage ; Save your Confederate money ; Southern resistance : the Klan and the courts
Grant takes command once again ; Frederick Douglass and the annexation of the Dominican Republic ; The long road to social reconstruction
Section II : the Brown decades, 1877-1892
The Cleveland era ; A nation of immigrants
Section III : closing the frontier, 1865-1890
The miner's frontier ; The Alfred G. Packer saga ; Mining in story and song
The cattlemen's frontier ; The cowboy as hero
The farmer's frontier ; A standard gauge ; Hell on wheels
Section IV : industry, wealth, and the city, 1865-1901
The men who made the era ; Dynamite! ; Sons and their father's riches
The city ; The city's changing face
Section V : the populist era, 1890-1896
The vicious cycle ; Solace on the lonesome prairie
Cleveland makes a comeback ; America's last "near war" with Britain : a historical vignette ; From the white city to Coney Island
Section VI : the age of imperialism, 1898-1904
The 1896 election ; William Allen White and the Populists
McKinley's road to war ; A message to Garcia
America in transition : progressivism
Theodore Roosevelt's world
The world seeks a canal ; The San Juan route : the Nicaragua Canal Company, 1887-1893
The United States digs a canal.
