The book accompanies a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which features 125 objects from the museum's collection of modern design and the John C. Waddell Collection, a major promised gift to the museum.

An insightful essay by guest curator J. Steward Johnson addresses the attempts by educators, critics, museums, and department stores to create an American audience for a new design appropriate to the twentieth century, the fascination with speed and the application of "streamlining" to everything from trains to toasters, and the importance of styling as a weapon against the economic depression of the 1930s.

An appendix of biographies of the designers rounds out the book.