It Can’t Happen Here

On this day in 1951, American writer and playwright Harry Sinclair Lewis died in Rome, Italy.

Sinclair Lewis was well regarded for his satirical novels and, in 1930, became the first US winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is probably best-known, now, though, for his 1935 satirical political novel It Can’t Happen Here, which depicts the rise of a US senator to the presidency, after a campaign that stirs up  fear and promises drastic economic and social reform under the guise of a return to patriotic ‘traditional’ values. After the election he takes total control of the government and imposes an authoritarian rule.

Science fiction, eh?  Crazy stuff.  Just crazy . . .