The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist, George Amberson Minafer, is the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the family's founder. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class.

This novel is best known through the 1942 Orson Welles movie, but it stands confidently in its own right. "The Magnificent Ambersons" is perhaps Tarkington's best novel, a typical story of an American family and town—the great family that locally ruled the roost and vanished virtually in a day as the town spread and darkened into a city.

This novel is a permanent page in the social history of the United States, so admirably conceived and written was the tale of the Ambersons, their house, their fate, and the growth of the community in which they were submerged in the end.