It Can't Happen Here: A Novel

Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1935. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good/Fair. 0x0x0. First edition. Large chip from jacket spine base with associated fading to spine, loss from other jacket corners, jacket edges rubbed with several closed tears, boards lightly soiled, owner bookplate on front endpaper. 1935 Hard Cover. 458 pp. 8vo. Original black cloth, gilt titles. A satirical work of dystopian fiction envisioning an American dictatorship. The causes for the descent into fascism are authentic, making the novel an insightful glimpse of what it looks like to trade one set of evils for another. Lewis wrote the book during the Great Depression, basing the dictatorship on Hitler's, but replacing hateful indoctrination with misleading appeals to American values. Many believe the novel to be a direct reaction to the possible candidacy of Huey Long for president in 1936. It was published five years after Lewis became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Lewis also won (and declined) the Pulitzer Prize for his 1925 novel Arrowsmith. (Inventory #: 2333015)