In this Pulitzer Prize-winning, critically acclaimed history, Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent. Howe's panoramic narrative ranges from the revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications, to the rise of mass political parties and the explosion of economic development that transformed America from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture.