In Volume One of The American Chronicles, Robert Vaughan panoramically evokes America at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, poised on the brink of greatness and fraught with the tumult of rapid change. In a time of robber-baron industrialists and rapid territorial expansion both at home and abroad, the new music called “ragtime” is the soundtrack for a confident nation of ambitious dreamers. It is 1904 and the nation’s eyes are on the St. Louis World's Fair, which features an astounding variety of modern marvels. The enormous exhibition brings together the best minds the country has to offer, each of them with something to lose and opportunities to seize: Bob Canfield, a young and wealthy landowner who is willing to risk his honor and his fortune to make a profit out of the desert; Eric Twainbough, a solitary young cowboy riding the rails East from Wyoming, innocently bringing disaster with him; Terry Perkins, a reporter desperate to get the scoop on the story in St. Louis; Connie Bateman, one of the politically conscious new women fighting for freedom, bravely defending their right to equality.

Tragedy at sea as the mighty Titanic goes down: dreams of freedom as millions of immigrants pass through Ellis Island: adventure in the gold fields of Alaska: a bloody revolution in Russia: and a single shot in Sarajevo that explodes into a world war... This is the century's second decade, filled with danger, turmoil; and blazing desire.

The Jazz Age takes the country by storm, gangland wars blaze across Prohibition Chicago, a conquered Germany follows a dark destiny, an historic flight crosses the Atlantic, and ominous rumblings shake wall street to the foundations. This is The century's third, tumultuous decade, filled with passion, promise, and explosive conflict.

Breadlines, soup kitchens, and riots in the streets as the Great Depression sweeps the nation; a bloody civil war in Spain; and a criminal empire. This is the century's fourth tempestuous decade, filed with danger, desire, and impossible dreams.

Japan's surprise attack plunges America into World War II, Hitler ravages Europe with death camps and terror, and an explosion in Los Alamos rocks the world into the nuclear age. Here is the century's fifth shatering decade, the pivotal years that will forever change the course of history with acts of conquest, courage, and desire.

Civil rights and Vietnam, The Berlin Wall and the Bay of Pigs: it was a time of cataclysmic change punctuated one November afternoon in Dallas by a series of gunshots that would change America forever...

Miniskirts and men on the moon, the Tet offensive and the Six-Day War: these are the tumultuous years of a decade, as ideals die along with Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy...and desperate times begin.