Fantastic overview of a sprawling period in American history, as the consequences of the civil war pushed expansion westward and changes in the north and south.

Only quibble is a little less detail on the political economy of Reconstruction than I would have wanted, having read Foner’s book and knowing how rich the subject is. For example, he doesn’t bother mentioning or explaining the rise of sharecropping in the South as an alternate method of control after the end of formal slavery, and how it was due to violent intimidation, whites’ existing monopoly of land, and the lack of capital or financial/legal support from the North.