America, 1908 The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T, and the Making of a Modern Nation

A captivating look at a bygone era through the lens of a single, surprisingly momentous American year one century ago. 1908 was the year Henry Ford launched the Model T, the Wright Brothers proved to the world that they had mastered the art of flight, Teddy Roosevelt decided to send American naval warships around the globe, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (a feat they have never yet repeated), and six automobiles set out on an incredible 20,000 mile race from New York City to Paris via the frozen Bering Strait. A charming and knowledgeable guide, Rasenberger takes readers back to a time of almost limitless optimism, even in the face of enormous inequality, an era when the majority of Americans believed that the future was bound to be better than the past, that the worldrs"s worst problems would eventually be solved, and that nothing at all was impossible. As Thomas Edison succinctly said that year, "Anything, everything is possible."

Jim Rasenberger is the author of The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs and High Steel: The Daring Men Who Built the World's Greatest Skyline. He has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and The Wilson Quarterly, among other publications. A native of Washington, D.C., he lives in New York City with his wife and sons.