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== The "Gilded Age" ==

== The "Gilded Age" ==

Not everyone was completely pleased with the booming prosperity of the United States in the decades after the Civil War.  A popular writer and humorist from Missouri, whose pen name was "Mark Twain" (his real name was Samue Clemens), criticized the decades after the Civil War by calling them the "Gilded Age."

Not everyone was completely pleased with the booming prosperity of the United States in the decades after the Civil War.  A popular writer and humorist from Missouri, whose pen name was "Mark Twain" (his real name was Samuel Clemens), criticized the decades after the Civil War by calling them the "Gilded Age."

He described this era (from the end of the Civil War through the 1880s) as "gilded" because it appeared golden, but beneath the shiny surface was greed, corruption and hardship.  Mark Twain even wrote a novel by that name, in which Washington, D.C., was run by greedy businessmen and corrupt government officials.  (Mark Twain wrote several other influential novels, including "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," describing a fictional journey on a raft on the Mississippi River).   

He described this era (from the end of the Civil War through the 1880s) as "gilded" because it appeared golden, but beneath the shiny surface was greed, corruption and hardship.  Mark Twain even wrote a novel by that name, in which Washington, D.C., was run by greedy businessmen and corrupt government officials.  (Mark Twain wrote several other influential novels, including "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," describing a fictional journey on a raft on the Mississippi River).