Discover the rise of the United States from its painful reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War (1861-65) through to the verge of global dominance in the wake of the Second World War. Through a series of interactive lectures, class discussion and a wide range of primary and secondary sources, we will examine key events such as Westward migration, the ‘New South’, African Americans after slavery, railroads and industrial expansion, Indian Wars, the Wall Street Crash, Prohibition and the ‘Roaring Twenties’, and America’s experience of the two world wars. While noting positive achievements - political, economic, social, and cultural - we will also discuss the United States' failures to live up to its oft-stated ideals and how modern America became in many ways the very thing it was established to oppose. Learn through lectures, class discussion and other primary sources.