Sinclair Lewis

Young college graduate Carol Kennicott moves from a big city to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, the small town from which her new husband hails. Imbued with ideals of urban improvement, she dreams of redesigning her adopted village, but her efforts are thwarted by the narrow-mindedness, pettiness and conventionality of the locals, who conspire against her and deride all her endeavours.An enormous commercial and critical success on its first publication in 1920, Main Street – regarded by many as Sinclair Lewis’s best novel – delivers a scathing satire on the American dream, and is invaluable as a document of pre-Prohibition Middle America.

Orphaned as a teen, Carol Milford grew up in a city in Minnesota. Already a compassionate person, Carol’s time studying in college and grad school exposed her to diverse, radical ideas and lifestyles, which she learned to either accept or tolerate. After college, Carol earns a position as a librarian in the state capital city, yet finds the work to be unsatisfying. This is why she agrees when her new husband, a doctor named Will, asks if they can move to his small hometown. However, soon after Will and Carol arrive in the rural town, Carol finds herself immensely disappointed in the scenery and culture. The architecture of the town is ugly and bland, and is decorated to match. Meanwhile, its occupants hold a high level of snooty conservatism, and immediately disapprove of Carol for being a working woman. Because Carol loves her husband and loves to help, she becomes determined to lead a reform for the town by cleaning up the streets and educating the people. However, as Carol attempts to start progressive clubs and tries to make friends, every idea she has is disregarded and disrespected by the town’s prominent cliques. Still, Carol persistent, and tries to overcome each obstacle they throw at her, dedicated to inspiring the town to adopt a more accepting and informed culture. Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street is ranked among the one hundred best English-language novels of the 20th century by Modern Library. With immense detail, wit, and emotion, Main Street certainly earns this honor. Through the strong depiction of a working-class woman and the inclusion of themes such as love, maturity, feminism, social change, and culture clashes, Lewis addresses important issues and encourages reflection and debate. This edition of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis features a new, eye-catching cover design and is printed in an easy-to-read font. With these accommodations, this edition restores Main Street to modern standards while preserving its original heart and mastery.

Carol Milford says "I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women "Her efforts meet with resistance, but a retreat to Washington, D.C. reveals that big city life presents its own problems, and she must learn to accept and appreciate Gopher Prairie for what it is.Harry Sinclair Lewis' books Elmer Gantry, Main Street, Babbitt, Kingsblood Royal, and Cass Timberlane were all banned in various places and times in the United States.

Anthony Di Renzo makes available for the first time since their original publication some eighty years ago a collection of fifteen of Sinclair Lewis's early business stories.Among Lewis's funniest satires, these stories introduce the characters, themes, and techniques that would evolve into Babbitt. Each selection reflects the commercial culture of Lewis's day, particularly Reason Why advertising, self-help manuals, and the business fiction of the Saturday Evening Post. The stories were published between October 1915 and May 1921 (nine in the Saturday Evening Post, four in Metropolitan Magazine, one in Harper's Magazine, and one in American Magazine).Because some things have not changed in the American workplace since Lewis's day, these highly entertaining and unflinchingly accurate office satires will appeal to the fans of Dilbert and The Drew Carey Show. In a sense, they provide lay readers with an archaeology of white-collar angst and regimentation. The horror and absurdities of contemporary corporate downsizing already existed in the office of the Progressive Era. For an audience contemplating the death of the American middle class, Lewis's stories provide an important retrospective on earlier times and a preliminary autopsy on the American dream.Appearing just in time to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Babbitt, this collection rescues Lewis's best early short fiction from obscurity, provides extensive information about his formative years in advertising and public relations, and analyzes both his genius for marketing and his carefully cultivated persona as the Great Salesman of American letters.

Omahyväinen, maahanmuuttajavastainen ja populistinen kansankiihottaja pyrkii Yhdysvaltain presidentiksi. Kuulostaako tutulta...?Sinclair Lewisin posketon ja samalla kylmäävä satiiri vuodelta 1935 kertoo Buzz Windripistä, kansanmiestä esittävästä pyrkyripoliitikosta, joka vetoaa pötypuheillaan köyhiin ja katkeriin äänestäjiin jakautuneessa maassa. Buzz uhoaa palauttavansa Yhdysvallat taas uljaaksi ja vauraaksi kansakunnaksi. Valtaan noustuaan hän alkaa kuitenkin johdattaa kansalaisiaan kohti fasistista yhteiskuntaa.Diktaattoripresidentin kärkkäin vastustaja, päätoimittaja Doremus Jessup ei usko, että uusi autoritaarinen hallinto kestää - kunnes Windrip ottaa haltuunsa kongressin ja korkeimman oikeuden ja ryhtyy muuttamaan maata totalitaristiseksi.Meillä sitä ei voi tapahtua on varoittava tarina siitä, miten demokratiaa voidaan käyttää väärin. Se voi olla mahdollista myös nykypäivän Yhdysvalloissa. Mutta meillä... onneksi meillä moista ei voi tapahtua. Eihän?Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) palkittiin aikanaan Nobelin kirjallisuuspalkinnolla ja Pulitzer-palkinnolla. It Can't Happen Here nousi jo ilmestyessään bestselleriksi, ja se on kokenut uuden tulemisen Donald Trumpin aikakaudella. Teoksen suomentaja Antti Immonen on kääntänyt lukuisia klassikoita."Yksi tärkeimmistä Yhdysvalloissa koskaan kirjoitetuista kirjoista." - New Yorker

Two famous satirical novels by America's first Nobel Prize winner for literature--Main Street and Babbitt--are bound into one volume to provide a provocative portrait of American society that still applies to today's way of life.

"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 save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press. Called "a message to thinking Americans" by the Springfield Republican when it was published in 1935, It Can't Happen Here is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today's news. With an Introduction by Michael Meyer and an Afterword by Gary Scharnhorst

Orphaned as a teen, Carol Milford grew up in a city in Minnesota. Already a compassionate person, Carol’s time studying in college and grad school exposed her to diverse, radical ideas and lifestyles, which she learned to either accept or tolerate. After college, Carol earns a position as a librarian in the state capital city, yet finds the work to be unsatisfying. This is why she agrees when her new husband, a doctor named Will, asks if they can move to his small hometown. However, soon after Will and Carol arrive in the rural town, Carol finds herself immensely disappointed in the scenery and culture. The architecture of the town is ugly and bland, and is decorated to match. Meanwhile, its occupants hold a high level of snooty conservatism, and immediately disapprove of Carol for being a working woman. Because Carol loves her husband and loves to help, she becomes determined to lead a reform for the town by cleaning up the streets and educating the people. However, as Carol attempts to start progressive clubs and tries to make friends, every idea she has is disregarded and disrespected by the town’s prominent cliques. Still, Carol persistent, and tries to overcome each obstacle they throw at her, dedicated to inspiring the town to adopt a more accepting and informed culture. Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street is ranked among the one hundred best English-language novels of the 20th century by Modern Library. With immense detail, wit, and emotion, Main Street certainly earns this honor. Through the strong depiction of a working-class woman and the inclusion of themes such as love, maturity, feminism, social change, and culture clashes, Lewis addresses important issues and encourages reflection and debate. This edition of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis features a new, eye-catching cover design and is printed in an easy-to-read font. With these accommodations, this edition restores Main Street to modern standards while preserving its original heart and mastery.

First published in 1920, "Main Street" is a biting and satirical look at small town America. Set in the 1910s it follows the struggles of its heroine, Carol Milford, to adapt to small town life. Carol, a young and progressive librarian living in St Paul, Minnesota, falls in love with and marries Will Kennicott, a doctor who dreams of returning to the small town of his childhood. Carol agrees and they move to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, a town modeled on Sinclair's own hometown of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Carol is disappointed by the town's drab appearance and it's provincial, small-minded inhabitants. Brimming with optimism and tenacity, she sets out to convince the town to modernize and embrace her progressive values. Her ideas are not received as she hoped and instead she is resisted at every turn and derided by her fellow townsfolk. For all its seeming bleakness, Carol is ever optimistic and refuses to give up or believe the fight isn't worth fighting. "Main Street" exemplifies Lewis' "vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters", which was cited by the Nobel Prize for Literature committee when he was awarded the prize in 1930. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

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 "

In this classic, Sinclair Lewis shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small-town life with its satire. Main Street attacks the conformity and dullness of early 20th Century mid western village life in the story of Carol Milford, the city girl who marries the town doctor. Her efforts to bring culture to the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip, greed, and petty small-minded bigotry.

ON a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears. A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom.