John Rogers (1829-1904) is arguably the most popular American sculptor ever, selling over 80,000 small plasters, known as ""Rogers Groups"" over the course of a career that spanned the late nineteenth century. Rogers himself said, ""I want each group to tell a story,"" and these narrative sculptures carried on a deeply rooted popular American genre tradition that was established in the antebellum period by painters such as William Sidney Mount and George Caleb Bingham. The book, generously illustrated and containing eleven essays on different aspects of his work (including its Neoclassical elements influences and the mass market it found), aims to bring Rogers's work to life for a new generation of admirers.

Other contributors include Linda S. Ferber, senior art historian and director emerita, N-YHS; Erin Toomey, Jessica Fracassini and Leslie Ransick Gat, Art Conservation Group; Michael Clapper, associate professor, Franklin and Marshall College; Melissa Dabakis, professor, Kenyon College; David Jaffee, professor, Bard Graduate Center; Michael Leja, professor, University of Pennsylvania; Leo Mazow, curator of American Art, Palmer Museum of Art; Kirk Savage, associate professor, University of Pittsburgh; and Thayer Tolles, associate curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art.