The Philadelphian

the long version

The novel that cracked upper-crust society wide open! Anthony Judson Lawrence never knew it, but he was the illegitimate son of a crude Irish contractor. He bore a proud Philadelphia name, but his mother was so poor she had to give dancing lessons to the children of the elite. Fatherless, handicapped by poverty and prejidice, Anthony had to claw every inch of the way to the dizzy, precarious heights of wealth and power . . .