consists of multiple texts, all interconnected historically. Each set of three chapters is arranged so that the first chapter focuses on the main narrative frame, the story of the three farmers and eventually of Peter Mays. The second chapter is an historical or philosophical essay that reflects the broader social context within which the narrative occurs. The third chapter focuses on a significant historical figure who, like Henry Ford, had an effect on the development of twentieth-Modernism.

Powers approaches time with a simultaneity that helps unify the seemingly disparate elements of his narrative. Either explicitly or implicitly, the three farmers are present in each of the book's twenty-seven chapters; Powers appears to imply by his narrative structure that all things eventually touch, that all human involvement in life and in society exists within some all-encompassing structure. It is this structure and its meaning that Powers seeks to understand...