Booth Tarkington's The Magnificient Ambersons describes the decline of the Amberson family from wealthy social prominence to impoverished social inconsequence. The fall of this family's fortune is mirrored in reverse by the explosive growth of the Midwest town in which they live. The relations and intimacies of the Amberson clan with the Minafer and Morgan families over the thirty years from about 1880 dramatize how quickly a compact society in which all know their hierarchical place changes to one in which the old orders, the old values, and the old certainties are subsumed in a ravening new social organism.

The local change from tiny town to modest city reflects the national shift during this period from a largely agrarian and rural society to a country dominated by industrial cities.

A related social concern is how seemingly impractical inventions can completely alter every aspect of a region: the...