This work explores John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series, with special emphasis on MacDonald's examination of the conflicts and joys of twentieth-century American culture and society. MacDonald describes himself as a moralist and this, combined with his narrative gifts, infuses his ever-present concerns for the quality and durability of American life. The first and last chapters, respectively, discuss MacDonald's early novels and the four he wrote concurrently with the series.

The remaining chapters analyze various themes that figure prominently in the series.

MacDonald's thinking reflects many of the concerns of his fellow citizens during his writing career while revealing his own personal reaction to the society around him. Noting his sense of an uncaused evil in the world and his prolific inventiveness, this work examines MacDonald's narrative exploration of America in which he reveals an unwillingness to give up either his frequently pessimistic views of society or the hope that it can somehow continue.

His posthumous Reading for Survival sounds the latter note in typical MacDonald fashion: Read and learn or die. McGee, in the hard-boiled detective tradition, exemplifies MacDonald's picture of the struggling, but coping, culture with no guarantees for the future.