Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of “robber baron” industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities...

In his April 2, 1917, war address, Woodrow Wilson cast the purpose of US involvement in World War I in broad, idealistic terms: the world, he declared, “must be made safe for democracy.”  The First World War was a total war, requiring the complete mobilization of American society. The methods used to mobilize the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, select men for the military, regulate transportation, and distribute propaganda set precedents for how the federal government would respond to the crises of the Great Depression and World War II.

In the spring of 1861, the United States of America split into two hostile countries—the United States and the new Confederate States of America. The two...

No event proved more important to the course of modern American history than World War II. The war cast America onto the world stage as a...