Their names are iconic: Eugene O'Neill, Willem de Kooning, Josef and Anni Albers, Emma Goldman, Mary McCarthy, Walter Gropius?the list goes on. Scorning the devastation that industrialization had wrought on the nation, they gathered on the beachfronts of Cape Cod. They began as progressives but soon turned to socialism, then communism. Together they found a community as they created some of the great works of the American Century. John Taylor "Ike" Williams renders the twisting lives and careers of a generation of staggering American thinkers and creators.