by Booth Tarkington (Author), Jeremy Beer (Editor)
America Moved: Booth Tarkington's Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869-1928 brings together for the first time all of the autobiographical writings of Booth Tarkington, one of the most successful and best-loved writers in American history. These are the memoirs of one of America's greatest literary figures--and one of the keenest interpreters of American manners and mores. During his lifetime, Tarkington was immensely popular. From 1902 to 1932, nine of his books were top ten bestsellers, The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams won Pulitzer Prizes, and Tarkington's Penrod stories became widely recognized as young-adult classics. America Moved demonstrates that Tarkington's writing and powers of social observation stand the test of time. Written in a genial, easygoing style, America Moved gently but consistently interrogates the values of the new commercial-industrial age, especially its obsessions with speed, growth, and efficiency. The humane skepticism Tarkington directs in these pages toward the automobile, sprawl, and the cult of Progress identifies him as a voice quite at home in the twenty-first century. America Moved will delight readers with an enjoyable eyewitness account of the vast social and cultural changes that transformed America between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
Author Biography
Jeremy Beer, a native of Indiana, is president of the American Ideas Institute. He is the author of The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity, and coeditor of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. He co-founded the influential localist web journal Front Porch Republic in 2009. He and his wife, Kara, live in Phoenix, Arizona.