Rich in narrative and colorful detail, this cultural history of America from 1830 to 1880 illuminates the fifty years that transformed a wild continent into a modern nation as it retraces the travels of eight eminently British visitors to the growing country's shores. Besides the nation that Charles Dickens hugely quarreled with or the one with which Oscar Wilde fell wittily in love, this lively volume examines the America that prompted Frances Trollope to acidly indict barbarous Cincinnati and that turned the celebrated actress Fanny Kemble into a passionate abolitionist. It explores the Colorado Territory with George Ruxton and travels by stagecoach with Richard Burton across the Great Plains. It follows the path of William Howard Russell, who covered the outbreak of the Civil War for the London Times, and chronicles the adventures of Frank Harris as a real-life Texas cowboy. In all, it brings new light to the dawn of modern America.