Amerika prezidenta Granta – Opatrný Josef (2019)

U. S. Grant’s eight years as president belong to the most turbulent periods in the history of the United States. The reunification of the Union following the Civil War opened the way to enormous economic growth, driven at least partly by the construction of the railway network. The locomotive became a symbol of technological progress, enabling the creation of a vast market for agricultural and industrial products made with the help of numerous inventions that radically changed the lives of every social class. Thousands of farmers, workers and engineers seized these opportunities, as did politicians and fraudsters. The Gilded Age, as contemporaries already called the period, was also marked by unprecedented corruption, which the authorities struggled to combat while addressing conflicts between the country’s Indigenous inhabitants and white society, continually reinforced by immigration. The author examines virtually every aspect of life in the period, in cities and in the countryside, including hygiene, household management and cultural opportunities. Hundreds of period illustrations accompany the text, bringing the true appearance of 1870s America to life.