"The pioneer study in depth, now classic, of the day-by-day life of a typical, mid-continent American urban community at the quarter-century mark. In his Foreword, Clark Wissler calls it "a pioneer attempt to deal with a sample American community after the manner of social anthropology ... a contribution to history of the kind that is coming more and more into demand, a cross-section of the activities of a community to-day as projected from the background...