The volume written by the renowned historian, Caroline F. Ware, investigates the impact that changes in society and culture that can influence the writing of history and the way in which the past is evaluated.
"As Louis Adamic has pointed out, it is to Ellis Island rather than to Plymouth Rock that a great part of the American people trace their history in America. More people have died in industrial accidents than in subduing the wilderness and fighting the Revolution. It is these people rather than the frontiersmen who constitute the real historical background and the heroic tradition of the mass of urban Americans.
The attempt to write American history from the bottom up started a generation ago with the study of the frontier; it has recently extended into the study of local communities and culturally homogeneous regions. In the still unexplored history of the non-dominant cultural groups of the industrial cities lies the story of an emerging industrial culture that represents the dynamic cultural frontier of modern America."
