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Eras

19 entries

Featured
Age of Exploration and Contact
The 115 years of European arrival that reshaped two continents, 1492–1607
Civil Rights Era
The 14 years of legislation, protest, and federal action that dismantled legal segregation, 1954–1968
Colonial America
The 168 years of English settlement that built the society the Revolution would transform, 1607–1775
Early Republic
The 28 years that turned a coastal experiment into a continental power, 1800–1828
All Eras (by date) A–Z By date
Before 1500 1600s 1700s 1800s 1900s 2000s

Before 1500

Pre-Columbian America
The 15,000-year human history of the Americas before European contact
Age of Exploration and Contact
The 115 years of European arrival that reshaped two continents, 1492–1607

1600s

Colonial America
The 168 years of English settlement that built the society the Revolution would transform, 1607–1775

1700s

Revolutionary Era
The 25 years that broke from Britain and built a republic, 1775–1800

1800s

Early Republic
The 28 years that turned a coastal experiment into a continental power, 1800–1828
Jacksonian Democracy
The 20 years of democratic expansion — and brutal exclusion — that remade American politics, 1828–1848
The Antebellum Period
The decades of deepening crisis that made the Civil War inevitable, 1848–1861
The Civil War
The conflict that tore the United States apart and abolished slavery, 1861–1865
Reconstruction
The unfinished project of rebuilding the South and remaking American citizenship, 1865–1877
The Gilded Age
The era of industrialists, immigrants, and inequality that remade America, 1877–1900

1900s

The Progressive Era
The reform movement that used government to rein in the Gilded Age's excesses, 1900–1920
The Roaring Twenties
The decade of prosperity, prohibition, and cultural upheaval that ended in catastrophe, 1920–1929
The Great Depression
The economic catastrophe of 1929–1941 that reshaped American life and government
World War II
The global conflict that made America a superpower and reshaped the world order, 1941–1945
The Cold War
The ideological standoff between the United States and Soviet Union, 1945–1991
Civil Rights Era
The 14 years of legislation, protest, and federal action that dismantled legal segregation, 1954–1968
Information Age
How computing and the internet remade American life, from the personal computer to the smartphone
Modern America
The post–Cold War decades — and the unraveling of their assumptions, 1991–present

2000s

War on Terror
America's two-decade response to the September 11 attacks, 2001–2021