The Magnificent Ambersons

In a Midwestern town of the late nineteenth century, the Ambersons are the richest and grandest family, with a mansion, a ballroom and a name everyone respects. George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled only grandson, grows up so arrogant that the whole town longs to see him get his 'comeuppance'. As the town turns into a smoky industrial city and the automobile arrives, built by the family's old friend Eugene Morgan, who once loved George's mother, the Ambersons' wealth and importance quietly drain away.

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946), from Indianapolis, won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel, published in 1918, and won it again for Alice Adams, one of only a few writers to win the fiction prize twice. Orson Welles filmed it in 1942. It is a moving picture of how progress sweeps away an old world.