Volume Two of David Reynolds' major "BBC Radio 4" series traces America's story from the Civil War to World War Two. This epic narrative tells the saga of the United States through the voices of those who lived it - presidents and farmers, mothers and children, settlers and soldiers, immigrants and native Americans. In "Power & Progress", the second series of thirty episodes, Reynolds depicts the tragedy and heroism of the Civil War (1861-65), which finally ended slavery, though not racial discrimination, and the dynamism of the reunited nation as it grew into an industrial giant.

World War One made America a force on the world stage but then the country lost its way, and its nerve, in the Depression, only for another World War to turn it into a nuclear superpower by 1945. This is also the story of how ordinary Americans lived, worked and had fun - with fascinating snapshots of H.J. Heinz, Buffalo Bill, skyscrapers, baseball, the Flappers and Gone With the Wind.

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