Beginning with Woodrow Wilson and U.S. entry into World War I, The Perils of Prosperity traces the transformation of the United States from an agrarian, isolationist nation into a liberal, industrialized power entangled in foreign affairs in spite of itself. William E. Leuchtenburg shows how the events of this period reflect the conflict between rural and urban attitudes that reached its crisis in the presidential campaign of 1928 and was finally resolved in the aftermath of the economic collapse in 1929.