A social and cultural history of the United States, told in the words of ordinary Americans, from the planting of the first settlements in Jamestown and Plymouth to the turn of the 20th century. Extracts form letters, diaries, memoirs, travel books, newspaper accounts, posters, advertisements, broadsides, and official documents combine to form a patchwork quilt of life in the United States. The book focuses on the specific and the personal rather than the abstract and the general - going to church on a cold winter day to hear a hellfire sermon, on what people elected to wear rather than who they elected to office, on going to school, living in a log or sod house, giving birth and dying.