The course of daily life in the United States has been a product of tradition, environment, and circumstance. How did the Civil War alter the lives of women, both white and black, left alone on southern farms? How did the Great Depression change the lives of working class families in eastern cities? How did the discovery of gold in California transform the lives of native American, Hispanic, and white communities in western territories? Organized by time period as spelled out in the National Standards for U.S. History, these four volumes effectively analyze the diverse whole of American experience, examining the domestic, economic, intellectual, material, political, recreational, and religious life of the American people between 1763 and 2005.

Working under the editorial direction of general editor Randall M. Miller, professor of history at St. Joseph's University, a group of expert volume editors carefully integrate material drawn from volumes in Greenwood's highly successful Daily Life Through History series with new material researched and written by themselves and other scholars. The four volumes cover the following periods: The War of Independence and Antebellum Expansion and Reform, 1763-1861, The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Industrialization of America, 1861-1900, The Emergence of Modern America, World War I, and the Great Depression, 1900-1940 and Wartime, Postwar, and Contemporary America, 1940-Present. Each volume includes a selection of primary documents, a timeline of important events during the period, images illustrating the text, and extensive bibliography of further information resources-both print and electronic-and a detailed subject index.

Randall M. Miller is professor of history at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. He holds a PhD from Ohio State University and has published more than 20 books and over 80 articles on topics as varied as race and slavery, politics, religion, media culture, urban affairs, immigration and ethnicity, the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and regional history. He is also the series editor for two Greenwood Press book series: the 26-volume series, Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Twentieth Century, and the 11-volume (to date) series, Major Issues in American History. He is also set editor for the 4-volume Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in America.