Booth Tarkington : Novels & Stories : The Magnificent Ambersons / Alice Adams / In the Arena

the long version

Here are three indispensable works from the Pulitzer Prize-winning laureate of the American heartland, including the novels that inspired a classic film by Orson Welles and an Oscar-nominated performance by Katharine Hepburn. The Magnificent Ambersons depicts the fall from grace of George Minafer, scion of the once-unassailable Amberson family whose wealth and grandeur are in precipitous decline. Alice Adams, perhaps Booth Tarkington's greatest work, offers a psychologically nuanced portrait of a self-aware young woman whose social prospects are rapidly diminishing. Tarkington's gifts as a story writer are displayed in the collection In the Arena: Stories of Political Life, published not long after he served as an Indiana state representative and drawing unforgettable from his firsthand encounter with the rough-and-tumble of real-world politics. With original illustrations from the first editions, helpful annotation, and a newly researched chronology of Tarkington's life and career.