In the earliest years of the 20th century, North American ballroom dancers favored the waltz or the polka. But then a new dance, the tango, broke onto the scene when Vernon and Irene Castle performed it in a Broadway musical. Rudolph Valentino, Arthur Murray, and Xavier Cugat popularized it in the 1920s and 1930s, and thousands of people crowded onto dance floors around the country to hear the music and dance the tango.

This work chronicles the history of the tango in the United States, from its antecedents in Argentina, Paris and London to the present day. It covers the dancers, musicians, and composers, and the tango's influence on American music.