Explanation: Mark Twain called the late 19th century the "Gilded Age." By this, he meant that the period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. In the popular view, the<u> late 19th century</u> was a period of greed and guile: of rapacious Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, and vulgar display.
Actually they are right, because in the period in the U.S. history after the Civil War and Reconstruction, lasting from the late 1860s to 1896, is referred to as the “Gilded Age.” This term was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published in 1873.
