The Magnificent Ambersons

Booth Tarkington’s 1918 novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, charts the slow fall of one proud Midwestern family across three generations. The Ambersons are the grandest name in their Indiana town until the automobile age and new industrial money quietly overtake their inherited wealth. At the center is George Amberson Minafer, a handsome, arrogant grandson whose refusal to let his widowed mother marry the inventor she loves helps ruin several lives, including his own. Tarkington traces the town’s growth from gaslit gentility into a smoky modern city, and George’s long-promised comeuppance arrives with unexpected weight. The book later inspired Orson Welles’s celebrated film. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.