The Gilded Age was Mark Twain's label for the post-Civil War decades. The term refers to a facade of proper and civilized behavior covering waste, corruption, and individual greed in late nineteenth-century America.

"The Gilded Age" (1873) was Mark Twain's biting satire on the shallowness of his times.

In American history the "Gilded Age" refers to the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, from 1865 to 1901, which saw unprecedented economic, territorial, industrial, and population expansion. The era overlaps with Reconstruction (which ended in 1877) and includes the major depressions, the Panic of 1873. The era was characterized by an unusually rapid growth of railroads, small factories, banks, stores, mines and other family-owned enterprises, together with dramatic expansion into highly fertile western farmlands.