From the shattered gentility of Edith Wharton's heroines to racial confrontation in the songs of Nina Simone, Claudia Roth Pierpont presents a kaleidoscopic story of American culture. Here are engaging portraits of artists and innovators who have helped to shape the country in the modern age, with commentary on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Katharine Hepburn, Dashiell Hammett, Orson Welles, and Marlon Brando, plus George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and that great jazz triumph of the New York skyline, the Chrysler Building.