A portrait of 1920s New York society. "7.30 Mental uplift. 7.45 Breakfast. 8 Psychoanalysis. 8.15 See cook". And so begins another day in the elegant, langorous world of the Manford family around whom this ironic and amusing study of a family drama revolves.

Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age--originally published in 1927. Taking her title from the sleep induced through medication to ease the pain during childbirth, Edith Wharton sketches a portrait of a society eager to escape the pain of everyday life through drugs and alcohol, secret sexual alliances, immersion in work, and the pursuit and capricious squandering of money.