Mencken's America Book

An analysis of statist structures in the lead-up to, development during and Reconstruction from the American Civil War on both the Confederate and Union sides. This book deals with slavery as merely a subset of systemic differences between an industrializing North and the plantation-south. It emphasizes the political bases of support (not class-based politics but systemic economic), the use of monetary policy for the industrializing interests of the North and the developing structure of the American banking system and Treasury departments. I'm reading the Battle for Bretton Woods concurrently and finding much explained in how the world economic system is set up through a better understanding of the systemic choices that America took in its own development. So much had confused me in understanding American politics in the later 19th Century, has been cleared up by this book.