The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Volume III: Transcontinental America (1850-1915) by D. W. Meinig

This volume overlaps slightly with the previous volume; Meinig returns to before the Civil War to cover the geographical history of the West in more detail. Then he shifts his focus to the country as a whole to look at railroads, the economy, the population, and how people were beginning to be united again after the Civil War. He closes by looking at American spheres of influence in the world. As with previous volumes, this book provides a good mixture of specific and general, lots of maps, and a fair amount of history.