In the 1920s, Americans were enamored of New York. It was the city which most represented the struggles of the modern age, the dilemma of new values versus old, innovation in the arts and in politics, and the aspirations and the excitement of the "Roaring Twenties." Radicals and artists populated Greenwich Village, speakeasies abounded, and the nouveau riche frequented posh nightclubs. It was into this atmosphere that Oscar Odd McIntyre, newspaper writer and aspiring columnist, in 1922 brought his small-town view of the world and his desire to describe the city to the folks at home.

In 1929 McIntyre wrote in the preface to the collection of his articles from Cosmopolitan that he had never changed his original idea. "I write from a country town angle of a city's glamour and the metropolis has never lost its thrill for me. Things the ordinary New Yorker accepts casually are my dish--the...