The lives and changing fortunes of 3 generations of a once-powerful and socially prominent family are chronicled in this vivid tale of the corrupting influence of greed and materialism. As the wheels of industry and commerce rapidly usher in the early 20th century, ambition, success, loyalty, prominence and prestige for the Amberson family forever changes.

Newton Booth Tarkington, an enormously prolific novelist, playwright, and short story writer who chronicled urban middle-class life in the American Midwest during the early twentieth century, was born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869. He was the son of John Stevenson Tarkington, a lawyer, and Elizabeth Booth Tarkington. His uncle and namesake, Newton Booth, was a governor of California and later a United States senator. In the essay 'As I Seem to Me, ' published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941, Tarkington recalled dictating a story to his sister when he was only six. By the age of sixteen