I'm working my way through the Oxford History of the U.S. series, but there's a gap between the Civil War and 1929. I filled in the Reconstruction era with Eric Foner's "Reconstruction; America's Unfinished Revolution", which was great. Can anybody recommend general histories for the period from Reconstruction to 1929 or thereabouts?
How about some Yale lectures instead- Civil war/reconstruction-David Blight http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119
African American History-Civil war to present Jonathan Holloway http://oyc.yale.edu/african-american-studies/afam-162
Sven Beckert's The Monied Metropolis is a great social/economic history of the rise of the bourgeoisie in the Gilded Age, and I really enjoy T. J. Jackson's Lears' No Place of Grace as an exploration of the cultural activities of the American upper classes around the turn of the century. They aren't quite general histories, but they are two of the best works in the genre of American history, and you will gain a lot of insight from reading them. Another social/cultural history of the Gilded Age I quite enjoy is Alan Trachtenberg's The Incorporation of America.
Sorry these answers skew towards the cultural. That's how my speciality skews, so I don't know as much about histories that focus on foreign and military policy, for example.