The American art community had its first glimpse of Surrealism in 1932. Its revolutionary art galvanized an emerging avant-grade, and four years later a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art catapaulted the movement into the cultural limelight. This vividly written cultural history tells the story of Surrealism's remarkable sea change, from a fiercely leftist, strongly literary, avant-garde movement into an apolitical, almost exclusively visual style. It shows how the American avant-garde selectively shaped European surrealism to meet its own agendas, and how it was in turn reinterpreted, de-politicized and commercially exploited by mainstream American culture and the fashion and advertising industries.