This extraordinary collection of short stories reminds us how great a talent Dreiser was. A giant among American writers, he fought throughout his career to capture life in realistic terms. In his stories as well as his celebrated novels, he sought to uncover the problems of common Americans at the turn of the century—their struggles with society and their dreams of power and wealth against a backdrop of threatening poverty.
"Dreiser has no peer in the American short story.…As fine as his novels are, they do not attain the artistic wholeness of his short tales. Among the moderns, there is almost no one capable of writing tales like these. The best of today is pallid and non-human when compared with Dreiser’s compassionate searchings."—from the Introduction by Howard Fast.

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) worked as a newspaperman in St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York, but he is best remembered for his fiction, notably Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy, and the "Trilogy of Desire" (The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic).