The 1910s is historically considered the decade of greatest social change in history. It saw the advent and proliferation of the automobile, electricity, lighting, radio, telephone and cinema. Our present time of change is actually quite tame in comparison, though also breathless. His Family is a tale of a widowed father, working to manage this decade of change as it affects his family in New York City. His Family was the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1919.

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He was thinking of the town he had known. Not of old New York he had heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young New York, the mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as a lad from the New Hampshire mountains. A place of turbulent thoroughfares, of shouting drivers, hurrying crowds, the crack of whips and the clatter of wheels; an uproarious, thrilling town of enterprise, adventure, youth; a city of pulsing energies, the center of a boundless land; a port of commerce with all the world, of stately ships with snowy sails; a fascinating pleasure town, with throngs of eager travellers hurrying from the ferry boats and rolling off in hansom cabs to the huge hotels on Madison Square... Continue reading book >>