The Great Centennial Exhibition of 1876 attracted 10 million Americans --- nearly 20 percent of the population --- and visitors from around the world. On display were inventions that signaled the changing landscape of American life, from the typewriter to the telephone to Heinz Tomato Ketchup. This celebration of America’s first hundred years came at a moment when its future seemed more precarious than ever --- as big money threatened to overwhelm the government, underpaid workers waged the first national labor strike and Black Americans struggled to exercise their hard-won freedom. Looming over the fair was the presidential race of 1876 --- a highly contested election. Fergus Bordewich animates these converging crises through the lives of four protagonists, revealing a country striving to live up to the promise of its founders while bracing for the 20th century.

The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prize-winning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed, it’s possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today. The Constitution was a broad set of principles. It was left to the members of the First Congress and President George Washington to create the machinery that would make the government work. Fortunately, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others less well known today rose to the occasion.