It Can't Happen Here

By Sinclair Lewis, Michael Meyer and Gary Scharnhorst

“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.

Includes an Introduction by Michael Meyer
and an Afterword by Gary Scharnhorst

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780698152700

Sinclair Lewis

Nobel Prize-winning writer Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) is best known for novels like Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith (for which he was awarded but declined the Pulitzer Prize), and Elmer Gantry. A writer from his youth, Lewis wrote for and edited the Yale Literary Magazine while a student, and started his literary career writing popular stories for magazines and selling plots to other writers like Jack London. Lewis’s talent for description and creating unique characters won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, making him the first American writer to win the prestigious award. Considered to be one of the “greats” of American literature, Lewis was honoured with a Great Americans series postage stamp, and his work has been adapted for both stage and screen.

Reviews for It Can't Happen Here

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was published in 1935. An American Liberal newspaper editor endures the descent into fascism by his country. He passes from relatively polite dissent to concentration camp prisoner, to undercover agent. The novel deals as well on the effect of his activities on his family, and community. It is a bit prosy for the modern taste, but sharp eyed. This is not the tight fit to conditions in the age of Trump that some people would have it but not bad for the time. The more you know about the 1930’s and its American politics, the better.

[aevaughn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Regarding Presidential Candidate Windrip’s nomination convention with the description of the procession: "Leading it, in old blue uniforms, were two G.A.R. veterans, and between, arm-in-arm with them, a Confederate in gray. … The Confederate carried a Virginia regimental banner, torn as by shrapnel; and one of the Union veterans lifted high a slashed flag of the First Minnesota. … Lee Sarason [,public relations manager,] never told anyone save Buzz Windrip that both flags had been manufactured .. in 1929, for the patriotic drama, 'Morgan’s Riding'."Stunning imagery such as above brings to mind the gold veneer of the Gilded Age.

[trile1000 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A chilling warning not to take democracy for granted. This sharp satire follows the rise of an American fascist. We see events through the eyes of Doremus Jessup, a small-town newspaper editor who witnesses the election of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip in 1936. A colorful politician based on Huey Long, the controversial Louisiana politician, Windrip triumphs on a platform of populist reforms and traditional values. However, he leads the transformation of the government into a totalitarian state ruled by fear and enforced by the blue-clad Minute Men, an American version of the Nazi Brownshirts. We follow Doremus's bitter struggle against the government and his role in the resistance. The book is an alarming reminder that American freedoms are fragile and is still relevant today.

[dasam-5 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Powerful Dystopian Political Novel

What seems at first a farce with a snicker, surprises over the course of the story into a dark Dystopian alternative history of the United States. It remains relevant and frightening, with a main character who is too good willed to believe that a Fascist dictatorship can happen and thus becomes ne of its enablers. He redeems himself by becoming a rebel, a political prisoner, and eventually an agent. The novel does not end with an easy resurrection of American democracy, but is hopeful in its inconclusive final chapter.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well...this is familiar. It was eerie how easily the dictatorship fell into place and I could see this (reasonably easily) happen today. As to the story itself, the writing wasn't as dense and disjointed as Lewis's more famous work - The Jungle. The characters were well developed and multi-faceted. The prose was poetic in places. A good read.

[seth_g · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We're a decade into the 21st century, and the increasing control of big banks and big corporations over all aspects of daily life, mixed with a political populism that appeals to all that's worst in the citizenry, is the stuff of nightmares. It's not the first time this particular nightmare has troubled the sleep of those who value the social compact that emerged in the past century.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis, first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1930), published a dystopian classic that is little read or remembered today. It should be. It Can't Happen Here, of course, posits that it can happen here, and more easily than we'd like to think.

The bugbears of the tale are Communists (which we didn't get over until 1989) and Liberals, which are still regarded as traitors by those who refuse to accept the legitimacy of any Democrat in the White House. And the populists--with their emphasis on corporate sovereignty, their lip service to Main Street, their obsession with guns, and their demands for the invasion of Mexico--don't seem dated at all. They call themselves the Corpos, but they're really just a tea party.

We follow a small-town everyman, a newspaper editor who loses his paper to the propagandists, his freedom to totalitarian courts, and his self-respect to the bullies of every stripe. It's a dark tale that is leavened with the ironic humor Lewis puts in the mouth of his characters. And it is startlingly prescient: Lewis knew just where Hitler and Mussolini were headed. And where I sometimes feel we're headed today because, of course, it can't happen here.

[beyerkat · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Terrifying given today's political climate.

[quaintlittlehead · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book first came to my attention when a newspaper article compared character Buzz Windrip to Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle. Indeed, much of my confusion about how such a person came to be the major candidate for his party is echoed in the beginning of Lewis' book. This is a fine exploration of what might happen when Americans dismiss a political candidate's more disturbing statements as mere rhetoric and elect him anyway. Surprisingly but wisely, much of the story focusses on the impact of the new fascist regime on a particular family, rather than recounting events as a historian would. This underscores the idea that politics is not only personal in terms of the impact it has on individual lives, but that each citizen is responsible for how his government operates. However, as much as modern readers might like to see the novel merely as a cautionary tale for America (or as much as some may look to it as prophecy), the book can not be separated from the context in which it was originally written. Punctuated with journalistic reports from foreign visitors to America about how everything in the country appears to be going wonderfully, Lewis' novel is a scathing rebuke to an America that turned a blind eye to Hitler's atrocities throughout the 1930s. This, too, is sadly a message that America still needs. We wish to believe not only that it can't happen here, but that it isn't happening anywhere. Lewis reminds us soberly that neither is true.

[dickmanikowski · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

While I read several of Sinclair Lewis's novels years ago, I had never even heard of this one until it was mentioned in one of the dozens of stories I've read about Trumpmania. IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE is the story of a really folksy populist politician who manages to secure the 1932 Democratic nomination (besting "Frank" Roosevelt) and then handily winning the presidential race. Upon taking office, the new president (Buzz Windrip) starts implementing the 15 plank platform that so endeared him with his supporters. With the assistance of his top-level confederates and the militia he had created during his campaign, he quickly establishes an increasingly fascistic dictatorship.The novel focuses on the editor of a small town newspaper in New England who ultimately becomes part of the resistance movement. While the plot is interesting, this is a long, long, long read.

[devil_llama · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lewis's depression era classic is, like many of his other works, lengthy and somewhat turgid prose, filled with a veritable stable of stock characters and broad stereotypes; the main character, however, is much more nuanced and richly drawn, and one suspects he is writing a reflective character here. Although it is filled with a great deal of unnecessary verbiage and more description than is required to get the piece across, the work still has a great deal of merit as a slice of Americana and a look at what could happen (still could). In fact, one begins to suspect the Tea Party read this, and misinterpreted it as an instruction manual. A very important book, especially for anyone who claims to believe such things can't happen here. The only problem is that the broad nature of his characters, the fact that they are basic stereotypes, probably prevented, andn would still prevent, many individuals from recognizing themselves, allowing them to shrug and say, "yes, but it can't happen here".

[emscape · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An important novel that shows no matter how unique and novel we think our current political situation is, a lot of it was feared and conceived of prior by this author. Many interesting parallels can be drawn between Berzelius Windrip and our current cheeto-hued toddler of a president. A chilling reminder that "it" absolutely can happen here and we the people must remain vigilant that it does not. I really identified with our protagonist, Doremus Jessup, as a "middle-class intellectual" who is rather comfortably in denial that there are enough citizens who can't see through the propaganda and chicanery of Windrip's campaign and seriously believe his promises enough to vote for him, thinking he'll give them a better life. At least Windrip's M.M.'s (private militia; paid better than any enlisted man) are getting a return on their investment. I don't think any citizen making less than a million a year has seen his or her situation improve under The Angry Creamsicle. This book was chosen by my (white, suburban, middle-aged ladies) book club, and not one of us was able to get all the way through it in the two months we had to read it. It was either too depressing, too dense or had too many references to people and events from the 20's and 30's that we were not familiar with. That was my problem. I kept going to look things up and falling down Wikipedia holes. I will probably slog my way through the rest of the book, but my heart really went out of it about halfway through when [spoiler] Doremus' son-in-law was unceremoniously and abruptly shot.[/spoiler]. It's disheartening, but the parallels are too prescient and accurate to discount.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What does it mean that I highlighted this, a work of fiction, as much or more than some of my recent nonfiction reads?

This is scary stuff. It wasn't. It was speculative political fantasy. But...Lewis was uncanny...so many premonitions of the stupidity of 2016. Now, Lewis was WAY off in casting the evil as a representative of a particular party, but the devolution of the modern extreme {other party} into thuggery, predating on fears, appealing to ignorance, counting on ignorance, post dates Lewis's writing by a bit. I hope you-know-who's team doesn't read this to get any more ideas. Of course, the bulk of the book concerns what happens after the dictator takes control, so it remains to be seen if Lewis's, and our, worst nightmares are realized...

[bobbieharv · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I never would have read this book if it were not for the current horrifying state of political affairs in the US. It was a long slog, as one reviewer said, and I was surprised at how turgid (stealing from another reviewer) the writing was. Dated, stilted language - it seemed as though he was trying to get the slang of the 30s down, but the dialogue just didn't sound natural. And with a demagogue/dictator elected President, you'd think there would have been more of a plot, but it was just boring. And, to pile on, the torture scenes seemed gratuitous.It's too bad. A more nuanced approach could have shed some light on what IS happening here now.

[lilibrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In an alternate United States history, set in the 1930's, an unqualified man with dictatorial intentions wins the presidency and institutes martial law, imprisoning all who disagree with him. A small-town newspaper editor and his friends set up a small local underground cell to try and fight for the lives and freedoms they miss.

[fhudnell-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written and set in the 1930s, this was brilliant satire, terrifying in its accuracy. A dictator is elected by gullible people based on promises of upholding good old American values, liberty, strength, protecting US interests and giving everyone (excluding negroes of course) $5000. During his campaign he would "...coldly and almost contemptuously jab his audience with figures and facts, figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect."After the despot's election, his cabinet is filled with rich cronies. The government sets up work camps and jails newspaper reporters and anyone else deemed a threat to the regime. However, the $5000 never materializes. There is a plot to start a war with Mexico to distract the masses and provide medals for the soldiers supporting the regime. I was hoping that the author, who was so prescient in predicting the problem, also had a solution. Unfortunately, getting rid of a dictator is not that easy. I'm also afraid that this book could provide handy hints for those seeking to consolidate their power (assuming that they read).I would have found this book much more amusing if I had read it a few years ago.

[ghr4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the wake of the 2016 presidential campaign, the shocking electoral result, and the frightening first few weeks of the new administration, Sinclair Lewis's remarkably prescient 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here has never been more noteworthy. In this work of alternate history, Senator Buzz Windrip, a flamboyant populist/anti-establishment demagogue receives the 1936 Democratic nomination over FDR and wins the presidency. So begins the de-evolution of the United States and its political and social norms and conventions into a ruthless dictatorship. The unfolding nightmare and descent into depravity is viewed through the eyes of the townspeople of bucolic Fort Beulah, Vermont, particularly Doremus Jessup, the idealistic editor of the local newspaper, The Daily Informer. While this is not an easy or pleasant read, given Lewis's halting and often uneven literary style and the lurid descriptions of brutality, it is an important and timely work. It is fascinating to note the similarities to our present day situation, especially regarding the elements of Windrip's populist message. And of particular note is the character of Lee Sarason, the satanic chief consultant who is the brain behind the mask and bellowing voice of Windrip.In D.J. Dooley's 1967 literary criticism The Art of Sinclair Lewis, the author is haughtily dismissive of the book: "It is all too fantastic; it could convince only those already convinced, and to anyone else its improbabilities would be reassuring evidence that there was nothing to worry about... the story is in the realm of fairyland. Lewis can't fool us; these ogres aren't real; it can't happen here."Dooley is mistaken. It can happen here.

[lavaturtle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As everyone who recommended this book has said, for a work published in 1935, it's eerily prescient. The writing style is a bit dated, full of page-long sentences that go on and on, and many of the references are less familiar now, but the overarching plot of America's takeover by a folksy demagogue is certainly still quite relevant. I was surprised by the references to Hitler and concentration camps, which I imagine read quite differently before World War II... There's a bit of misogyny and disdain for gay men, but rather less than I would have expected for the time period. Overall, it was an interesting look into where the writer thought we were headed in the 1930s.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Though some parts of the book are politically dated and move fairly slow, with no total military takeover and murders of Democrats, Socialists, or Independents,the fascist terror has already taken place under the current administration in 2020.The ending is a little confused. It people can still safely escape, why don't they ALL go?

[reenum_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Before November 2016, this book would have read like an alarmist dystopian fantasy. Instead, this book shows us what would happen if the Trump administration was allowed to do everything they want to do. It is a reminder of what can happen when democratic norms erode. Berzelius Windrip is Donald Trump if he was minimally competent. The fact that Trump is such a bumbling dope is all that separates us from the reality in this book. The Windrip platform points listed in one of the early chapters sound a lot like the policy proposals I read on Trump's campaign website before the election. The ending of the book gives some grudging hope that if Trump goes too far, somebody will act to stop him. This book is important, but also depressing given current events.Recommended.

[lukerik-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I am abandoning this a few chapters in. It’s not without merit, but something is wrong with it. Having ground to a halt mid-way through a sentence I picked up The Handmaid’s Tale and read the opening chapter and it’s quite apparent that the difference is between an author who has thought about each word before she slaps it on the page and an author who hasn’t. I’m 41 now and don’t have the time to read thoughtless words.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A novel published in 1935 by Minnesotan author Sinclair Lewis. This novel is a political novel and a satire has had a recent rise in popularity as some have liked to compare this to the current administration. Really, this book was written in 1935 when fascism was on the rise and it explores what it would be like if the US had a fascist government and how that might come happen. The story itself is interesting alternate history, satire. "Written as two very different populists rose to power — Louisiana Senator Huey Long in the U.S. and Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany — the semi-satirical novel imagines a Democratic U.S. Senator, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, appealing to nativists in order to successfully secure the party nomination over Franklin Delano Roosevelt." From Times magazine. BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN NOVEMBER 16, 2016I am not much for reading political novels but over all this was an entertaining story and if you really read it, you will see that it doesn't matter, which side your on, politicians make promises that they don't keep and I don't think it is a given that people who have traditional values and patriotism are bad people and I don't think it is nice to call people who don't agree with your own political viewpoints names such as fascist. Nor are all socialist good and wonderful people without selfish ambition. Never the less, the current social and political times gave this book a second life. Also the author being a Minnesotan, Minnesota had a lot of honorable mentions throughout the book. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, the first American novelist to be so honored. Here is blurb from Penguin "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."It reminds me of The Iron Heel, The Jungle, and The Plot Against America.Rating 3.83

[mossjon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Written in the 30s, during the depths of the Depression, before World War II, this dystopian classic paints a grim picture of America's fall into it's own flavor of fascism. Some of his assertions stretched my belief nearly to the breaking point, most notable being the seemingly easy evaporation of two of our three branches of government after the League of Forgotten Men rise in power and seize the executive branch.

The novel follows the life of Jessup Doremus, an elderly (nearly retirement age) editor of a small town Vermont newspaper, uniquely positioned to lead us down the slippery slope of disappearing civil liberties and rising paranoia among the citizenry. The evils promulgated by petty near-thugs upon strangers, neighbors, friends and family ... almost indiscriminately ... all as an exercise in absolute power (as far as I could tell).

Not a comforting read, except for a brief glimpse of hope at the end. I can understand the shock value it would have had when it was published. I'm glad I read it, and even more glad none of it has proved prophetic for America ... yet.

I read this novel as one of the suggested readings for my local library's adult winter reading program called 'Altered States' and blogged about my reading journey.

[toddtyrtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Scary - he writes about the George W. Bush presidency decades before it occurred. Fortunately W's rule ended differently than this book did...

[martialalex92 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

oddly prescient given our current time

[donhazelwood · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Na ... it can't happen here ...

[sheila1957 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A timely book though it was written in 1935. It deals with a presidential election where the President declares martial law and takes everyone's liberties and rights away. He changes the country from states to 8 districts and appoints people loyal to him. Those who object to his authoritarian ways are jailed, put in concentration camps, or killed. Many try to flee to Canada. He, of course, ends up like all dictators, deposed, with another man like him taking over. I had a bit of a problem getting into this. Once I did, I found it interesting to see how some accepted with happened especially if they ended up in the "ruling" class. Watching others protest showed the power of the people when they stand together, though it was an underground movement. IAs news gets around about what is happening in other parts of the country, I liked how Doremus and his band of rebels get the information out by any means possible. This book shows what could happen if a fascist gets into office and what is lost and how much is lost because he says what the poor want to hear. It also shows what happens when the press is suppressed. When news gets out, it's disseminated to the masses. I found it fascinating how they did it. This is worth reading and learning from it.

[tanya8dogearedcopy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

07AUG2016 - Written in 1937, this is a novel of alternate history in which the American populace elects Buzz Windrup into office, and ushers in an era of fascism. Every thing in the story has a reason for being there, i.e. it's all to illustrate a point. The didactic style doesn't make it the easiest of reads; but the story itself is compelling as it follows a newspaper editor who, while not voting for Windrup, was guilty of being rather complacent in thinking that whatever was happening in Germany and Italy couldn't possibly happen here in the USA. 14AUG2016 - Lewis' wife was Dorothy Thompson, was a journalist who accurately reported, to an incredulous American audience, what was going on in Germany during the rise of Nazism. Lewis himself turned away from the popular satires he had been known for to write this alternate history of the US in which Roosevelt loses the election to a fascist. The didactic style and serious message(s) don't make this an easy read; but it's one that makes you think regardless of your political affiliation. Read the Introduction by Michael Meyer afterward (if you are the type to read intros at all) as it's a bit spoilerific; and be prepared to set some time aside when you're done with the whole thing for some self-assessment - especially if you like to engage online over political topics. Highly recommend as being relevant to today's political landscape.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis, author; Grover Gardner, narratorThe time is 1936. The Depression is a nightmare memory which has changed the mood of the country. There is political unrest, a charged atmosphere of distrust for government officials, anger at rich corporate giants, and a general somber malaise is hanging over America. Political candidates represent the people’s fears, and one in particular appeals to their emotions by stressing the idea of helping “the forgotten man”. Although there are those that find his diatribes unbecoming, because of his racist and anti-Semitic remarks, there are more who seem to be glomming on to his message of hope and equal, economic opportunity for those who feel left behind.Socialism, Fascism, Communism and Capitalism are on the radar of all voters. Which ideology will be chosen in this country overrun by opinion and nationalism, where certain groups of people are being vilified and ostracized and others praised as more worthy? Each major party accuses the other of wrongdoing, of being fascists.In the novel, Hitler is becoming more popular in Europe and in America where FDR is facing a myriad of other Presidential pretenders. When the Socialist Brezelius Windrip defeats him and is elected President, there is disbelief. Soon, all Hell breaks loose as he begins to change the face of the country. He wants to give everyone $5000 a year as a minimum, standard wage, (but he doesn’t. He makes promises to promote health care and provide free education. He offers pipe dreams that cannot be fulfilled, and when he is swept into office, with a country divided for and against him, he merely eliminates his detractors using his volunteer band of supporters called Minute Men. He immediately arms and begins to pay them. They eagerly remove those who defy him, by any means they choose. Congress and the Supreme Court Justices are arrested. The M.M.’s, as they are called, are thugs who indiscriminately and gleefully used their power to brutalize and abuse those who formerly had power over them.Windrip used old venerable institutions of education as prisons and created concentration camps. By eliminating those that would not acquiesce to his demands, by putting them into work camps or murdering them after using barbaric methods of torture to get them to confess to crimes or rethink their positions, he gained more and more power. Rebellion was almost impossible as it was easy to suppress. When some well known and respected citizens were arrested and killed for no apparent reason, few protested lest it happen to them too. Racist and anti-Semitic laws were passed. If one disobeyed, arbitrary punishment and horrific methods of torture were used. Windrip’s minion’s brutality rivaled Hitler’s.As people came to their senses, realizing that no one was safe from the whims or wrath of these ill equipped leaders and military men, some attempted to rebel. Journalists began to realize that they might have helped this man get into office and they tried to remedy the situation with editorials. They were quickly silenced, arrested and/or eliminated. No opposition was tolerated. An underground effort formed to help victims of the brutality escape from the country, but the borders were well guarded. Some got to Canada, which was predictive of a time decades later when resisters of the Viet Nam War crossed the border.Soon, there was unrest at the highest levels of government. After a little over two years, Windrip was betrayed and overthrown by his friend and confidante, Secretary of State Lee Sarason. A month later, Sarason was murdered by the new Secretary of State, Dewey Haik who took over and consolidated power even further and was even more ruthless.What kind of a country would the United States become after all was said and done? Which group would emerge victorious? Who were the culprits causing so much dissidence in the country and suspicion of the government? Was it the rich, the corporations or the ignorant who were hungry for power and equality even though they actually were not prepared to handle the authority given without abusing it? Sinclair Lewis never really provides an answer. The book condemns Fascism and Communism but really does not offer a better alternative when it ends, leaving the resolution of the rebellion unfinished.The book was prescient since WWII and its atrocities were not in full swing when it was published. Still, there must have been more of an awareness of Hitler’s vicious policies than I had believed, because many forms of cruelty and maliciousness used by Hitler were arbitrarily practiced in the concentration camps of Lewis’ imagination. Most of the current reviewers are saying this book describes a political climate like our own today, and they proclaim it laid the groundwork for the election of Donald Trump, a President they do not support. It is a well documented fact that the media is biased against him because of his unsophisticated and often immature retorts to their criticisms; also the publishing industry, as well, falls into that category of progressives who do not approve of his election. It is also a fact that these very same people supported one of his opponents, overwhelmingly. This opposition seems to be largely responsible for creating the same atmosphere today, that Lewis wrote about in 1935. They call for resistance to the President for the same behavior they are even more guilty of and are therefore hypocrites, hiding behind an emotional appeal to people who wish to remain ignorant, in the same way as Lewis’s characters did, at first. That said, anyone who followed our recent election would realize that Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Senator who represented Vermont, was more closely related to Berzelius Windrip than Donald Trump. Sanders offered free education to all and wished to impose a mandatory salary for everyone, as well. However, Sanders was against the power of big corporations, so in that way he veered from Windrip who used them to further his agenda. Sanders wanted to represent those who felt they were getting short changed. Trump wanted to represent those who were being ignored.The continued practice of presenting only negative views, without addressing anything positive about the President’s achievements, may very well set the stage for something like “It Can’t Happen Here” to actually “Happen Here!”, especially if people remain complacent or simply behave like lemmings, taking as doctrine the false statements made, simply because they fit their narrative. The book was excellent, but the reviews seem contrived in order to promote the particular political point of view of the reviewer, namely the progressive or socialist one of the extreme left. Just like in the book, our own cast of characters is blown this way and that by the different politicians and their speeches. Our most powerful and famous personages use their bully pulpit to make wild accusations, often without any basis in reality, just because they can’t deal with, or simply refuse, t,o accept the facts.Could someone, like Windrip slowly commandeer power by eliminating individual choice, speech and freedom? The media today has taken to pointing fingers at Trump to make him appear frightening. If they continue to sow dissent and discontent, perhaps there could be someone like that, but it isn’t Trump. His agenda is in no way like that of Windrip’s. Still, it is horrifying to contemplate how easily and quickly a country could be corrupted by a leader who harbored hateful, despotic plans and who had the support of a ready military organization behind him/her. Occasionally, it felt like there was a bit too much dialogue in the audio version, so I believe that, the book should be read in print in order to get the most out of it.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to receive the Nobel Prize For Literature, wrote a form of naturalistic satire that at its best (see Main Street, Babbit, or Arrowsmith) was worthy of the accolades that he received. This satirical political novel was written in 1935 after he had already published fifteen novels. It was a time when the United States and Western Europe had been in a depression for six years and Lewis asked the question – what if some ambitious politician would use the 1936 presidential election to make himself dictator by promising quick, gimmicky solutions to the depression. The protagonist of the story is Doremus Jessup, a small-town newspaper editor in Vermont. Doremus struggles for a year with the new government’s attempts to censor his paper and ultimately ends up in a concentration camp. When he escapes from the concentration camp, he finds himself part of the resistance movement because that is all there is left for him to do. He blames himself for the failed revolution because he did not take Buzz Windrip more seriously when there was still a chance to stop him. While Doremus Jessup is a generic character, the identity of Buzz Windrip, the power-hungry senator who makes himself dictator, would be obvious to any American in 1935. Parallels are made in his dictatorial control of his own unnamed state with someone who many critics consider to be a reference to Huey Long, who was preparing to run for president when the novel was being written. The identity of the main ally of the fictional dictator would be equally obvious, Bishop Peter Paul Prang, the popular radio preacher who endorses Buzz Windrip’s campaign, is based on Father Charles Coughlin, the most popular radio speaker of the thirties who had a weekly program on which he denounced President Roosevelt and the Jews for causing and perpetuating the depression. (In his novel, Lewis foresees that TV would have even greater propaganda potential than the radio – this fictional dictator introduces mass coast-to-coast TV broadcasting in 1937 - something that did not happen in reality until 1948.) In the real world President Roosevelt used the radio in a similar way and exerted censorship via his political control over the FCC which held the major networks in thrall through licensing requirements.Meanwhile Windrip defeats Roosevelt for the democratic party presidential nomination, and after winning the election, establishes a dictatorship with the help of a small group of cronies and a ruthless paramilitary force. Although the fictional dictator Windrip ran for President as a Democrat, any implied attack on Hitler’s Germany was seen as Democratic party propaganda in 1935, since Jews, Hitler’s enemies, mostly voted Democrat. Any discussion of the politics of It Can’t Happen Here should keep in mind that Sinclair Lewis, the author, was a political liberal who toyed with the left wing for a while in his youth. In his novel, Lewis's satire was a confused and over-the-top mixture buffooning small town conservatism with progressive politics. The populist Windrip was both anti-semitic and anti-Negro among other views that could best be described as an irrational hodge-podge with no apparent ideological foundation. Doremus Jessup, is a moderate Republican newspaper editor whose motto is: "Blessed are those who don’t think they have to go out and Do Something About It!" But then Jessup, like his creator Sinclair Lewis is plunged into the chaos of the Depression, when American society seemed to be falling apart. When Americans looked for solutions to the Depression, the great majority went no further than the progressive platform of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But for many, these changes were not effective and they looked for something more drastic. Lewis believed that most of those who wanted more radical solutions would not turn to the small American left wing, but elsewhere. It Can’t Happen Here is not a revolutionary book. It is speculative fiction that posits the rise of fascism in the United States during the 1930s, an eventuality that many people felt couldn't happen here, and so were not on guard against. Lewis's prose is stuffed with florid description and turgid prose, dating the novel and making it hard to plod through. While some of the statements made by many characters seem prescient in that they could be spoken by any political hack today, many of the novel's assertions strain belief, so that I wasn't entirely convinced that it could "happen here". However, in spite of this I still consider It Can't Happen Here to be a noteworthy example of dystopic alternative history.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What an extraordinary act of prescience from Sinclair Lewis. The blurb on the back of the recently re-issued Penguin edition offers this brief synopsis: ‘A vain, outlandish, anti-immigrant demagogue runs for President of the United States … and wins.’ Devastating topicality, all the more astounding when one realises that the book was published in 1935.I had read a couple of Sinclair Lewis’s other novels ([Babbitt] and [Main Street]) but had never even heard of this one until I chanced upon a display of it in my local Waterstone’s and succumbed to an impulse buy. Like his other books, it has a dated feel (well, it is eighty years old) and I found the tone of the opening few pages rather off-putting. Once I got beyond them, though, I was hooked. The great charm of [Babbitt] was its celebration of the humdrum and ordinary, and that permeates this book as well, though here it is counterbalanced by the pellucid insight into the appetite and quest for power. The reader is guided through the startling events leading up to and then proceeding from the election of Buzz Windrip to the Presidency by Doremus Jessop, editor and columnist of the local newspaper in Fort Beulah, Vermont. Jessop is far from perfect, and has in his time subscribed to number of political inclinations, ending up in middle age as a wise, benign and liberal man, concerned at the threat to prevailing social mores while also hoping for a more equitable world.Buzz Windrip is appalling, but all too plausible, and emerges fully formed into the political scene as America struggles to set the Depression behind her while striving to avoid further entanglement in the political and military crises looming in Europe as fascist dictators spring up seemingly everywhere. Throughout the Presidential campaign numerous commentators compare Windrip with Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, to be met wth the constant refrain of, ‘It can’t happen here’, until, of course, it does.Lewis writes in a simple, clear style, and excels in his portraits of middle class life in rural America. He captures the divisions that gradually affect the community of Fort Beulah as the campaign nears its conclusion perfectly. Even eighty years on, I felt I knew these people and could see how and why they formulated their opinions. It almost felt like talking to my colleagues now.