"Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives" offers a well-informed look at the impact of new labor practices in the 1800s. It analyzes this pivotal moment in the broader context of the nation's economic development, measuring its consequences for Americans as both workers and consumers in all regions of the country.

"Industrial Revolution" examines what industrialization meant for American artisans, women workers, slaves, and manufacturers. It shows how this new working world led to sharpening class divisions and expanded consumerism. Throughout, groundbreaking social historians...

Too often, says Jennifer L. Goloboy, we equate being middle class with "niceness"--a set of values frozen in the antebellum period and centered on long-term economic and social progress and a close, nurturing family life. Goloboy's case study of merchants in Charleston, South Carolina, looks to an earlier time to establish the roots of middle-class culture in America. She argues for a definition more applicable to the ruthless pursuit of profit in the early republic. To be middle class then was to be skilled at survival in the market economy.

What prompted cultural shifts in the...