An American Tragedy, V. 1

The novel that defined America's dark dream. Clyde Griffiths is born into poverty, the son of street preachers whose ragged hymns barely keep the family fed in Kansas City. But Clyde has seen another America, the gleaming hotels and wealthy young people whose lives seem painted in light. He wants that life with a hunger that will consume him. When he lands a job at a wealthy man's mansion, he begins his ascent, but the America that seduces him is also the America that will destroy him. Based on a real murder case, Dreiser's masterpiece traces how a young man shaped by poverty and driven by wanting becomes the architect of his own catastrophe. This is not just one man's tragedy. It is the tragedy of a society that promises everything and delivers only the hungry ghost of desire. Raw, uncompromising, and devastating in its compassion, An American Tragedy remains the definitive American novel about class, aspiration, and the fatal cost of wanting more.