The format of this bibliography is without precedent. We suspect that this book will one day be considered the prototype for all bibliographies because of its clarity, ease of use, and the lavish production details.

As a Professor of Literature at the graduate level, I am acutely aware of the need for quality literary analyses of this type. Wish I could have written it myself. A really good book.

This book will serve as a high water mark for all bibliographies to follow. The numerous illustrations, the obvious painstaking care with which the material was assembled and, above all, the accessability of the material to all researchers, professional and novice, make this a necessity for any library.

I came across an editorial recently referring to a "Babbit-type" person and decided it was time to read this book. It was a good read. At times I laughed aloud. There were passages I was tempted to memorize for quoting. I did care what happened to Babbit.

But I'd like to alert young readers that despite Lewis' efforts to make Babbit sympathetic, he is a charicature. In my mid-forties, I've known many businessmen, seen many unexamined lives and mid-life crises. Even 80 years after Babbit was written (when conformity is less in vogue in the US) I've known many conformists.

I haven't known anyone like Babbit. It is out of character for a people person like Babbit to be *so* fond of Paul and yet blind to Paul's needs. It is out of character for him to be so protective of Paul and yet so estranged from his own children.

Enjoy the book and let it remind you to think for yourself and to be real, but don't let it convince you that businessmen are doomed to conformity and to sacrifice of all their ideals. To be good at business is to weild power and though we don't see it ni "Babbit", that power can be used for good. Babbit is almost as much a charicature as are Ayn Rand's businessmen heroes.

Incidentally, as good as this was, I thought Lewis' "Arrowsmith" was better.

If you have no respect for hollow persons hungry on power, money, image, in a word conformity, then have them read this. Surely you know a person as such. Simply have them read this. It utterly stultifies conformists and demands of one not to be one.Here, with Sinclair Lewis, there is impressive detail and perhaps more anger then I can say. The man is George F. Babbitt, 46-year old middle-class realtor, immature, greedy, mean, arrogant, silly, unable to think for himself. To put it simply, he has no meaning in his life, nothing to live for. He puts up appearances, exagerates the truth, eats too much, drinks, bullies, shows off. Conformist, hypocrite.

There is no real plot, rather a day-in-the-life-of situation, presenting I would argue a sold believable character. I felt I had met Babbitt hundreds of times before. He even appeared briefly in a dream or two of mine, so real was he in the book. Having read this book I came to resent Capitalism deeply. And yet this book is not merely about provincial politics, it has to do with the hollow living of many people who hold capricious beliefs. The style of the book is, I feel, original, since few authors have the audacity of Lewis to apply capitalism to nearly every paragraph ("It was a master-piece among bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes.") Beware, however, this novel has enough detail to entail a longer than necessary read. If Babbit himself were to read it, he would not last through the opening chapter, and that, there, is the sad paradox of what Lewis was trying to express.

Recently I read two good non-fiction books about 1920s America: The Uncertainty of Everyday Life (Harvey Green), and Only Yesterday (Frederick L. Allen). Both of these books mentioned Sinclair Lewis' novel Babbitt, so I thought I'd check it out.

After the introduction to this period I got from the above-mentioned histories, I found Babbitt to be a nice companion piece and a good continuation of my study of Roaring 20s America.

Written in 1922 and set in 1920, this novel gives what I think is a good picture of USA in that time. True, Lewis' own prejudices against the upper middle class businessman of his era shine through. But I think the cultural insights we see in the novel are quite accurate. We can take the Babbitt's and their friends as typical representatives of their time and social class --- we see their "typical" day, their "typical" vacations, pasttimes, and activities. Even the colloquialisms are interesting; I can see how they can become annoying after a while, but they do add a reality to the story.

I recommend Babbitt, the other two books I mentioned, and perhaps Edward Behr's book Prohibition as a package for the ambitious amateur historian who seeks to understand what life in our grand parents' and great grand parents' America was like. I think if you get through all four you'll have a pretty good idea of what things were like in that time period.