Between 1880 and 1939 the two great forces of the western world collided. Them and Us is the story of that social upheaval. It is a tale of how the United States sold its heiresses into ennobled slavery at the turn of the century, found the tables turned around the time of the First World War, and ended up subjugating smart society to the "Almighty Dollar" in the 1930s. It is about prejudice, fear, bitchiness, arrivistes, fine architecture, low life, ostentation and sheer incomprehension. It is about the Old World's dread of the power of New America and the New World's longing for the historical status of the Old. - Jacket flap.