In this study of Gilded Age literature and culture, Ben Railton proposes that in the years after Reconstruction, America's identity was often contested through distinct and competing conceptions of the nation's history. "Contesting the Past, Reconstructing the Nation" argues that the United States moved toward unifying and univocal historical narratives in the years between the Centennial and Columbian Expositions, that ongoing social conflict provided sites for complications of those narratives, and that works of historical literature offer some of the most revealing glimpses into the nature of those competing visions. Gilded Age scholarship often connects the period to the 20th-century American future, but this book shows that it is just as crucial to see how the era relates to the American past. Railton closely analyzes the 1876 and 1893 Expositions, finding that many of the period's central trends, from technology to imperialism, were intimately connected to particular visions of the nation's history. Concerned with key social questions such as race, Native Americans, women, and the South, "Contesting the Past, Reconstructing the Nation" provides close readings of a number of texts for the ways they highlight these issues. This book examines established classics ("Adventures of" "Huckleberry Finn" and "The Bostonians"); newer additions to the canon ("The Conjure Woman," "Life Among the Piutes," "The Story of" "Avis"); largely forgotten best-sellers ("Uncle Remus," "The Grandissimes"); unrecovered gems ("Ploughed Under," "Where the Battle Was Fought"); and autobiographical works by Douglass and Truth, poems by Harper and Piatt, and short stories by Woolsonand Cooke. These readings, while illuminating the authors themselves, contribute to ongoing conversations over historical literature's definition and value, and a greater understanding of not only American society in the Gilded Age, but also debates on our shared but contested history that remain very much alive in the present.