The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, is a book that modern readers will perhaps find hard to appreciate. Not so much from the writing itself — Wharton is one of the masters of literary craft and this book won her the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1921. Rather, modern readers, raised in an age of independence and the anti-hero, where cultural standards are routinely smacked down with a hammer, may just not understand or have patience for the conflicts and dilemmas raised in the book. In exquisite detail, Wharton brings the cultural boundaries, customs, and mores of upper class New York in the 1870s to life, primarily through the relationships between Newland Archer, May Welland, and Ellen Olenska. The characters are conflicted by having to balance restrictions and customs of their class, and their feelings of duty and honor, against human emotions of love and passion. I think modern readers should really give this book a chance, as it offers a rare insight into a world long forgotten, and if only for that, it deserves to be read.