Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis, is a satirical novel about American culture and society that critiques the vacuity of middle class life and the social pressure toward conformity. The controversy provoked by Babbitt was influential in the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Lewis in 1930. The word "Babbitt" entered the English language as a "person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards".

***Babbitt***is a scathing critique of early 20th-century American society, written by Sinclair Lewis. The novel portrays the life of George F. Babbitt, a middle-class real estate agent in the fictional city of Zenith. Through this character, Lewis delivers a satire on conformity, materialism, and the moral emptiness of American culture during that era.Babbitt is a man trapped in a predictable and superficial routine, forced to confront his own dissatisfaction and...

7 Works of Sinclair LewisBabbittFree AirMain StreetOur Mr WrennThe InnocentsThe JobThe Trail of the Hawk

Carol Milford is an exuberant, liberal-hearted woman who marries a man from a small town. After they marry they settle in his home-town, Gopher Prairie, which Carol finds narrow and ugly. She throws herself into reforming the town, but is met only with derision by her own class. She decides to leave, but finds that the world outside is just as flawed as Gopher Prairie. She remains uncowed, however, declaring "I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women!"

“The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal.”—SalonIt 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 a...

It Can't Happen Here is a semi-satirical political novel by Sinclair Lewis published in 1935. It features newspaperman Doremus Jessup struggling against the fascist regime of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who resembles Gerald B. Winrod, the Kansas evangelist whose far-right views earned him the nickname "The Jayhawk Nazi". It serves as a warning that political movements akin to Nazism can come to power in countries such as the United States when people blindly support their leaders.

In Dodsworth, Sinclair Lewis turns from the provincial American town to the transatlantic world of wealth, leisure, and cultural aspiration. The novel follows Sam Dodsworth, a retired automobile manufacturer, and his restless wife Fran as their European journey exposes incompatible desires, moral illusions, and the fragility of marriage. Written in Lewis's lucid realist style, the book combines social satire with psychological acuity, situating American business culture against the older m...

This satirical novel by the Nobel Prize–winning author of It Can't Happen Here examines medicine in the modern world through the eyes of an idealistic man.The assistant of a small-town midwestern doctor, young Martin Arrowsmith is fascinated with the contents of Gray's Anatomy. Eager to pursue an adventurous career in medicine and science, he eventually sets off for medical school, where he hopes to dedicate himself to research. But as Martin prog...

The book takes its name from the principal character, George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged partner, with his father-in-law, in a real-estate firm. When the story begins, in April 1920, Babbitt is 46 years old. He has a wife, Myra; three children (Verona, 22; Ted, 17; and Tinka, 10); and a well-appointed house in the prosperous Floral Heights neighborhood of “Zenith,” a fictitious city in the equally fictitious state of “Winnemac,” which is adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. (Babbitt does...

It Can't Happen Here is a semi-satirical political novel by Sinclair Lewis published in 1935. It features newspaperman Doremus Jessup struggling against the fascist regime of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who resembles Gerald B. Winrod, the Kansas evangelist whose far-right views earned him the nickname "The Jayhawk Nazi". It serves as a warning that political movements akin to Nazism can come to power in countries such as the United States when people blindly support their leaders

The book takes its name from the principal character, George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged partner, with his father-in-law, in a real-estate firm. When the story begins, in April 1920, Babbitt is 46 years old. He has a wife, Myra; three children (Verona, 22; Ted, 17; and Tinka, 10); and a well-appointed house in the prosperous Floral Heights neighborhood of “Zenith,” a fictitious city in the equally fictitious state of “Winnemac,” which is adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. (Babbitt does...

“Arrowsmith” is a book by Sinclair Lewis an American writer. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.“Arrowsmith” is a novel by Sinclair Lewis. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis declined).Arrowsmith tells the story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith of Elk Mills, Winnemac (the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set), as he makes his way from a small town in ...