Showing results by author "Sinclair Lewis" in All Categories

Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, is dismayed to find that many of the people he knows support presidential candidate Berzelius Windrip. The suspiciously fascist Windrip is offering to save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. But after Windrip wins the election, dissent soon becomes dangerous for Jessup. Windrip forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States into a totalitarian state.

A greedy, philandering Baptist minister, Elmer Gantry turns to evangelism and becomes the leader of a large Methodist congregation. Often exposed as a fraud, he is never fully discredited. Elmer Gantry is considered a landmark American novel and one of the most penetrating studies of hypocrisy in modern literature. It portrays the evangelistic activity that was common in 1920s America as well as attitudes toward it.

This famous satire of life on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, mirrors with devastating honesty life on Main Streets from Albany to San Diego.

On the surface, everything is all right with Babbitt’s world of the solid, successful businessman. But in reality, George F. Babbitt is a lonely, middle-aged man. He doesn’t understand his family, has an unsuccessful attempt at an affair, and is almost financially ruined when he dares to voice sympathy for some striking workers. Babbitt finds that his only safety lies deep in the fold of those who play it safe. He is a man who has added a new word to our language: a “Babbitt,” meaning someone who conforms unthinkingly, a sheep.

This epic of the booming 20's captures the relentless culture of American business. A classic novel about conformity in small town America - celebrated for its comic tone, statire, and vivid dialogue. L.A. Theatre Works, then a fledgling radio theatre company, completed Babbitt in 1989. This production was so well received that L.A. Theatre Works has since become the world's premiere radio theatre company.

A biting satire that countered the American myth of wholesome small-town life with a depiction of narrow-minded provincialism, it was to some degree based on Lewis's own experience of growing on Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Set in mid-1910s, it depicts the struggles of Carol Kennicott, a city girl, as she tries to adapt to small town life, having left her librarian job and St. Paul, Minnesota to marry Dr. Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie. Dismayed by the town’s drabness and the conforming, petty inhabitants, Carol optimistically sets out to improve the town.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of a young physician and researcher who dedicates himself to the pursuit of scientific truth even in the face of personal tragedy, corruption, and greed. At the time of its publication, this audiobook was voted "Exceptional Recording" by Talking Books Magazine. 

The lonely predicament of Carol Kennicott, caught between her desires for social reform and individual happiness, reflects the position in which America's turn-of-the-century "emancipated woman" found herself.

Una satira de la vida estadounindense. Sinclair Lewis, ganador del Premio Nobel, quiso mostrar en sus dos grandes novelas Babbitt y Calle Mayor, aspectos de la vida de su pais, con un ojo que satirizaba esa hipocresia puritana que muchas veces se presenta no solo en Estados Unidos sino en todas partes.

Claire Boltwood and her father drive their Gomez-Dep roadster from Minnesota to Seattle, exposing themselves to all the perils of early motoring. They encounter the upper-crust Boltwoods who are at once more noble and more insignificant. Other class barriers exist between Claire and a mechanic named Milt, who, along with his cat, follows close behind.

This audiobook tells the wonderful story of Carol Milford, a city girl in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the beginning of the story she is full of hope and aspirations as she completes her studies at college. Her dreams are those of changing the world in which she lives and making a true contribution to society. She marries a doctor from a small town in the country and moves to his home in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Gopher Prairie is a town like any other small town in America and the town folks don't really see a need for change at all.

In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.

Widely hailed as a milestone in American literature, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street vividly describes a country on the verge of massive change, with traditional values being threatened by progress. The novel's heroine, Carol Milford, is a highly educated, ambitious woman who plans to join a newly enlightened society. But after marrying a small-town doctor, she finds herself trapped in the role of a dutiful wife. Carol's desires for social change conflict with the security of her comfortable married life, as she struggles to understand the cost of conformity...and rebellion. As relevant today as it was upon its 1920 publication, Main Street is both a masterful piece of writing and a fascinating microcosm of America's social evolution.

Martin Arrowsmith is fascinated by science and medicine. As a boy, he immerses himself in Gray’s Anatomy. In medical school, he soaks up knowledge from his mentor, a renowned bacteriologist. But soon he is urged to focus on politics and promotions rather than his research. Even as Martin progresses from doctor to public health official and noted pathologist, he still yearns to devote his time to pure science.

Arrowsmith is the story of a brilliant man named Martin Arrowsmith, who has a passion for science and medicine, but with a weakness for women, money, and glory. As a child, Martin would spend his free time reading through the medical books in the local doctor’s practice. This interest leads him to medical school, and eventually Martin starts his own private practice in medicine, while getting married to Leora Tozer. 

Martin Arrowsmith’s youthful curiosity for science has blossomed into an altruistic devotion to medicine and research. The doctor moves from small towns to big cities and from local offices to prestigious institutes. With every step upward that Arrowsmith takes in his career, his idealism is challenged by the greed, corruption, and commercialism of the scientific community, as well as by the temptations of women, money, power, and glory. Against the odds, and through loss and groundbreaking discovery, Dr. Arrowsmith must stay true. 

With his breathtaking social insight and his graceful sentences, Sinclair Lewis—a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner—stands out as one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. At turns lyrically soul-searching and scathing in its honesty, Babbitt captures the essence of the 1920s while remaining a timeless piece of literature. Babbitt, the ultimate conformist and social climber, seeks power in his community and self-esteem from others. Outwardly, he is the ultimate “big booster,” and he toes the company line with “zip and zowie.”

Meet Sam Dodsworth, an amiable 50-year-old millionaire and "American Captain of Industry, believing in the Republican Party, high tariffs, and, so long as they did not annoy him personally, in Prohibition and the Episcopal Church". Dodsworth runs an auto manufacturing firm, but his beautiful wife, Fran, obsessed with the notion that she is growing old, persuades him to sell his interest in the company and take her to Europe.

Sinclair Lewis’ George F. Babbitt is a complicated and conflicted character. When you think you have his next move figured out, he surprises you. As you begin to like him, he does something to evoke the “what a rat” response. Male menopause wasn’t a pre-Great Depression term, but you could say George has all the symptoms....

We travel with The Hawk, or Carl Ericson, son of Norwegian immigrants, born at the end of the 19th century, through the first three adventurous periods of the young man's life. We see him as an adventurous boy, running away with Gertie Cowels, the girl that lives in the big house in the better part of town, only to be rescued by Bone Stillman, a backwoods philosopher and influence on Carl. He leaves his childhood, Gertie and Joralemon behind, for a short attempt at higher education, then to pursue the hobo life, a Bowery bartender, an engineer in Panama, and an aviator.