The thing that impressed me then as now about New York… was the sharp, and at the same time immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant… the strong, or those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so very, very weak - and so very, very many.

Other interviewees included Lillian Nordica Emilia E. Alfred Kazin characterized Dreiser as "stronger than all the others of his time and at the same time more poignant; greater than the world he has described but as significant as the people in it" while Larzer Ziff (UC Berkeley) remarked that Dreiser "succeeded beyond any of his predecessors or successors in producing a great American business novel. ".

Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (August 27 1871 – December 28 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school.