This narrative-based social history is ideal for college and high school students researching this era. Thematically organized chapters on Economic Life, Domestic Life, Recreational Life, and more are broad in scope but include primary documents and telling details that give readers a visceral sense of the lives of people who lived during the era of industrialization. Primary documents range from first-person diaries of individuals who lived during the era, to letters from freed slaves looking to reunite with relatives sold away from them, to speeches and essays by activists including Frederick Douglass and Jane Addams. They reveal how people understood the goals of education, the legal position of African Americans in the South, and marriage, among many other daily phenomena. Describes a range of personal experiences along with the importance of the economic and social developments. A chronology, glossary, selection of illustrations, and further reading sources complete the work.