We live in the shadow of the era illuminated by the documents in this volume. During World War I and the 1920s, the United States experienced economic, social, political and cultural changes that marked the beginning of modern America. Industrialization increased; a consumer economy developed; the modern civil rights movement was born; women won the right to vote, as their roles and status continued to change; and questions of free speech and other civil liberties arose. The documents in this volume explore these and other issues that in various ways continue to mark American life. Topics include:

• World War I, the League of Nations, the Fourteen Points Plan and the Treaty of Versailles
• Civil rights, the Black soldier experience, Jim Crow and the Great Migration
• Antiwar dissent, pacifism, neutrality, challenges to free speech, anti-communism and anti-socialism
• Labor unions, economic change in the 1920s,  the growth of stock market and rising prosperity
• Social change, suffrage and the rise of the New Woman, fundamentalism and modernism, and Prohibition