Industrial America

Children's Literature

This volume does a very credible job in showing what happened during the Industrial Revolution that changed lives in America and elsewhere around the world. The reader is given a glimpse into the way people lived at the beginning of this period when inventions and manufacturing processes began to rapidly change the way business was conducted. The influence of wars and the availability of immigrants seeking a better life also determined how this new way of life developed. Factory workers were often underpaid, or even worse, were children forced to work long hours at tedious jobs. Labor laws, labor unions, and workplace safety measures resulted from courageous efforts by various workers. The United States became connected by transportation and the telephone and cities became the place to live rather than the family farm. It is hard to imagine what life was like before this revolution took place. The reader will begin to understand how the world we live in today was influenced by tremendous changes of one hundred short years. The book features an index, a glossary, a time line, a bibliography, and more information on the www.facthound.com website. This title is part of the "We the People" series. 2005, Compass Point Books, Ages 9 to 12.
—Barbara Youngblood