The Gilded Age: 1876-1912: Overture to the American Century

For fans of the beloved HBO series The Gilded Age, a definitive volume on life and thought in America during the era—now reissued with a beautiful new cover.

With Season 3 of the hit Julian Fellowes HBO series The Gilded Age breaking records in summer 2025 with its highest ratings ever—and season 4 anticipated to air in 2026—this book is the perfect fix for fans eager to dive deeper into the dynamic history of this period.

The Gilded Age—the name coined by Mark Twain to refer to the period of rapid economic growth in America between the 1870s and 1900—offers some intriguing parallels to our own time. In this lushly illustrated, insightful book, prolific historian Alan Axelrod explores this intense era in all its dimensions. Like today, the turn of the century was an era of technological wonders, but also a period divided—by wealth, by class, and by politics.

Axelrod powerfully and vividly portrays the rise of the great industrial and financial empires; inventors like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford; the rise of consumerism; mass immigration; struggles for basic human rights in labor and housing; extraordinary architectural and artistic production; the story of Reconstruction; the changing roles of women; controversial presidential elections and constitutional crises; and more.

More than 200 photographs, political cartoons, engravings, news clippings, and other ephemera help bring this fascinating period into focus.