Carson's full-scale treatment of American history combines scholarly exactness with evocative passages that lead the listener to a clearer understanding of the people and events, the triumphs and the shortcomings, which have shaped this nation. Starting with the "filling out" of the West, this fourth volume goes beyond the standard historical facts and events of these formative fifty years of American history. Included are crisp and incisive discussions of Darwinism and Socialism and their effects upon American society. Also covered are civil service reform; regulation and the courts; the rise of labor unions; the Spanish-American War; the Panama Canal; World War I; Bolshevism and the spread of Totalitarianism; Nazism in Germany; monetarism and prosperity; and the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge.