The titular family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new money families, which derive power not from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's unspecified friend says, "Don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?" The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socioeconomic change in America. The story is set in a largely-fictionalized version of Indianapolis, and much of it was inspired by the neighborhood of Woodruff Place. Much later, in 2002, came a TV adaptation based on Welles' screenplay. In 1942 it was again made into a movie, written and directed by Orson Welles, though the released version was edited against Welles wishes. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted into the 1925 silent film Pampered Youth. The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington, the second in his Growth trilogy after The Turmoil (1915) and before The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927).
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