Sinclair Lewis's barbed portrait of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, shattered the myth of the American Middle West as God's Country and became a symbol of the cultural narrow-mindedness and smug complacency of small towns everywhere. At the center of the novel is Carol Kennicott, the wife of a town doctor, who dreams of initiating social reforms and introducing art and literature to the community. The range of reactions to Main Street when it was published in 1920 was extraordinary, reflecting the ambivalence in the novel itself and Lewis's own mixed feelings about his hometwon of Sauk...

The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis one of three books at the heart of The Republic of Imagination by Azar Nafisi, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
George F. Babbitt, a conniving, prosperous real estate man from Zenith, Ohio, revels in his popularity, his success, and, especially, in the material rewards they bring. He bullies his wife, flirts with other women, and patronizes the less successful. But when his best friend is sent to prison for killing his wife, Babbitt's middle-class complacency is shattered,...

In this classic satire of small-town America, beautiful young Carol Kennicott comes to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, with dreams of transforming the provincial old town into a place of beauty and culture. But she runs into a wall of bigotry, hypocrisy and complacency. The first popular bestseller to attack conventional ideas about marriage, gender roles, and small town life, Main Street established Lewis as a major American novelist.

In the fall of 1920, Sinclair Lewis began a novel set in a fast-growing city with the heart and mind of a small town. For the center of his cutting satire of American business he created the bustling, shallow, and myopic George F. Babbitt, the epitome of middle-class mediocrity. The novel cemented Lewis's prominence as a social commentator.

Babbitt basks in his pedestrian success and the popularity it has brought him. He demands high moral standards from those around him while flirting with women, and he yearns to have rich friends while shunning those less fortunate than he. But...

-The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump's authoritarian appeal.---Salon
It Can't Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.
Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to...

Sinclair Lewis world-famous satire of religious hypocrisy and the excesses of the Roaring 20s.
Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be invited to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis...

Prosperous and socially prominent, George Babbitt appears to have everything a man could wish: good health, a fine family, and a profitable business in a booming Midwestern city. But the middle-aged real estate agent is shaken from his self-satisfaction by a growing restlessness with the limitations of his life. When a personal crisis forces a reexamination of his values, Babbitt mounts a rebellion against social expectations -- jeopardizing his reputation and business standing as well as his marriage.
Widely considered Sinclair Lewis's greatest novel, this satire of the American social...

Three years before the civic-minded Carol Kennicott came to life in Main Street, Una Golden was confronting the male dinosaurs of business. Like Carol, the heroine of The Job is one of Sinclair Lewis's most fully realized creations. Originally published in 1917, The Job was his first controversial novel. A "working girl" in New York City, Una Golden-caught in the dilemmas of marriage or career, husband or office, birth control or motherhood-is the prototype of the businesswoman of popular and literary culture. Introducing this Bison Books edition of The Job is Maureen Honey, a professor of...

This volume contains Sinclair Lewis s 1925 novel, "Martin Arrowsmith." It tells the story of an aspiring scientist who goes from a small Midwest town to the highest levels of the scientific community. Masterfully written and utterly engaging, "Martin Arrowsmith" is recommended for the discerning reader, and is a must-have for collectors of Lewis's work. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but Sinclair refused to accept the award. Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and...

Harry Sinclair Lewis was a novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. He was awarded (and rejected) a Pulitzer prize for "Arrowsmith," and in 1930 became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. His books "Elmer Gantry, " "Main Street, " "Babbitt, " "Kingsblood Royal, " and "Cass Timberlane" were all banned in various places and times in the United States.

"Main Street"'s protagonist, Carol Milford from Minneapolis, must adjust to small town life after marrying country doctor Will Kennecott and moving to his home town of Gopher Prairie. She finds the town backward,...