The United States was born in the violence of revolution, and it experienced equally violent growing pains that resulted in the Civil War. That conflict would be particularly bloody, with more American lives lost than in both World Wars combined. Following the end of the war, the violence of the Reconstruction era, the Jim Crow South, and ongoing Indian wars continued to convulse the former Confederacy. As a battered nation emerged into the twentieth century, World War I and the rise of organized crime awaited. This exceptionally bloody and difficult period of American history is told in vivid detail with the help of an abundance of primary source materials.