"What a Great Book!" - Jennifer P., HISTORY/A+E - - - - "A Blazing Gilded Age" is the epic story of a volatile nation burning with ambition, yet bleeding with injustice. It was a time of profound change, boldly transforming from an agrarian backwater into an industrial powerhouse. Center stage is the Wozniak family; poor coal miners struggling to achieve the elusive American dream. Suffering a string of calamities at the hands of their ruthless and depraved boss, Archibald Desmond Huxley, the Wozniaks are thrust into utter turmoil, thus igniting a blazing journey of revenge, justice, and survival. During the Wozniaks' quest they encounter many icons, including Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Nikola Tesla, Presidents Grant, Garfield, Arthur and McKinley, Buffalo Bill, and many others, thus painting a broad and vivid canvas of 19th century America. Springing to life is an era boiling with bravado, yet blistering with blunders, as innovation and military might coincide with child labor, class warfare and political corruption. After many unexpected twists of fate--some fortuitous and others heartbreaking--the Wozniaks emerge victorious, thus finally achieving the American dream, yet not without scars. Both powerful and poignant, "A Blazing Gilded Age" serves as an entertaining and enlightening read of how and why America has gone astray, and why it became a world leader. While at its core, it imparts the harrowing, yet triumphant, tale of a family's struggle to survive in an age that, in many ways, was as dark and rough as coal and at times could be as blazing as Hell.