Sinclair Lewis
1) Arrowsmith
Author
Description
After years of work as a small town doctor and a research scientist, Arrowsmith heads for the West Indies with a serum to halt an epidemic. A tragic turn of events forces him to come to terms with his career and his personal life.
2) Main Street
Author
Series
Description
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...
3) Babbitt
Author
Formats
Description
Babbitt is the middle-class, average-American protagonist of this novel. Though he conforms to society and attempts to scale the social ladder, Babbitt gradually becomes dissatisfied with the American Dream. He branches out to test other, more rebellious ways of life. He returns to where he began, disillusioned with the equally rigid standards he has found among the non-conformists, though still holding an openness to individuality in his heart. As...
4) Free air
Author
Series
Publisher
Jonathan Cape
Pub. Date
1930
Description
Bored of the parties and luxuries that come with her socialite lifestyle, Claire Boltwood longs for something more authentic in her life. Desperate for adventure, Claire and her father decide to travel from New York City to the Pacific Northwest in their automobile, a new privilege enjoyed by the rich. Though he is a clever businessman, Claire's father knows nothing about cars, so he encourages Claire to drive, challenging the gender stereotypes of...
5) Elmer Gantry
Author
Formats
Description
A vulgar and licentious college football captain becomes a messenger of God as a suave evangelist preacher.
Author
Description
First published in 1935, when Americans were still largely oblivious to the rise of Hitler in Europe, this prescient novel tells a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy and offers an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.
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
...8) Mantrap
Author
Publisher
Grosset & Dunlap
Pub. Date
[c1926]
Description
A burned-out New York lawyer's vacation in the Canadian wilderness takes a troubled detour in this novel by the Nobel Prize—winning author of Main Street.
Lawyer Frank Prescott is exhausted. The forty-year-old bachelor works late into the night, poring over documents. When he sleeps, he wakes up in a panic. Not even a round of golf at his country club or a Broadway show helps calm him down. He just wants to escape the city and feel as though he...
Author
Publisher
Harcourt, Brace and Company
Pub. Date
[c1929]
Description
Meet Sam Dodsworth, an amiable fifty-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. He agrees for the sake...
