The two works collected in this volume sprang from the same fruitful collaboration that gave rise to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. Both are set in America, but an America of myth. In The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Brecht's parable of greed and indifference, Mahagonny is a boom-town fusing Miami with Sodom and Gomorrah.

Founded on the principle that it is easier to prospect gold from people's pockets than from the earth, it is a city threatened with catastrophe but also obsessed with pleasure and the problem of how to pay for it. The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Brecht's supremely ironic ballet libretto, is the story of two sisters who in seven years traverse seven cities. In each, one sister is tempted by one of the seven deadly sins.

First performed in Paris and London in 1933, with music by Weill and choreography by George Balanchine, it premiered in the United States in 1958 in a production by Balanchine.

Of the translations by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman that are reprinted here, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1960 that she knew of "no other adequate rendering of Brecht into English." Arcade's definitive edition also contains an introduction by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, the editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English, together with extensive notes and variants.