With the emergence of Abstract Expressionism after World War II, the attention of the international art world turned from Paris to New York. In this book Dore Ashton captures the vitality of the cultural milieu in which the New York School artists worked and argued from the 1930s to the 1950s. Working from archival material, from contemporary newspapers and books, and from extensive conversations with the men and women who participated in the rise of the New York School, Ashton provides a cultural and intellectual history of this period. In examining the sources of this important movement - from the WPA program of the 1930s and the influx of European ideas to the recognition in the 1950s of American painting on an international scale - she conveys the concerns of an extraordinary group of artists including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman and Arshile Gorky. Documentary photographs illustrate Ashton's appraisal of the New York School scene.