“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,
is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today’s news.