Booth Tarkington

Dans une petite ville du Middle West des années 1870, Isabel Amberson, est courtisée par deux prétendants : Eugene Morgan, un bricoleur plein d'imagination, un rien farfelu ; et Wilbur Minafer, un jeune homme d affaires assidu au culte du dimanche, qui est tout sauf drôle. Isabelle choisit d épouser Wilbur dont elle aura un fils. Devenu jeune homme, celui-ci se révèle Vite arrogant, plein de morgue, insupportable. Seule une personne semble pouvoir lui résister, Lucy, la fille d'Eugene Morgan... Prix Pulitzer 1919

"The Magnificent Ambersons is perhaps Tarkington's best novel," wrote critic Van Wyck Brooks. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize after it was first published in 1918, Tarkington's powerful social commentary traces America's economic growth through the declining fortunes of three generations of the successful and socially prominent Amberson family. Set in a fictional Midwestern town during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -- the epic story follows the Ambersons' downward spiraling fortunes during a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. George Amberson Minafer, the arrogant heir to the family's wealth, illustrates the corrupting influence of greed and materialism at a time when the swiftly turning wheels of industry and commerce are overtaking old ways. Definitions of ambition, success, and loyalty are also changing. Almost overnight the prestige of the Ambersons irreversibly changes as well. An exciting chronicle of one family's accumulation of wealth and subsequent downfall, the book also paints a fascinating portrait of the forces that shaped modern American society.