This epic of class, ambition, and murder in the early twentieth century is "[a] masterpiece...America's Crime and Punishment" (Kirkus Reviews).

 

Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy is the story of a weak-willed young man who is both a villain and a victim of the valueless, materialistic society around him. Inspired by the true story of an early twentieth-century murder and adapted into a classic film under the title A Place in the Sun, An American Tragedy follows Clyde Griffiths as he is drawn into a circle of wealthy friends despite his own poverty-stricken background. Leaving the needs of his family behind as he buys expensive presents to impress a rich girl, Clyde finds that his new life leads him into a tragedy born of recklessness. Yet he continues to yearn ambitiously for money and status--a desire that will be his downfall.

 

"Dreiser is widely regarded as the strongest of the novelists who have written about America as a business civilization. No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions."--The New Yorker