It Can't Happen Here

In 1936, the American electorate votes a populist presidential candidate into the White House, where he rewrites the Constitution and declares Congress obsolete – thereby ushering fascism into the United States. The story follows dissenting newspaperman Doremus Jessup as he works against the government. Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received prior to publication of this novel, which was inspired in part by “maddening” conversations about European politics with his wife, the influential anti-Nazi journalist Dorothy Thompson.