- Lewis, Sinclair. It Can't Happen Here. New York:
Signet, [1935] 1993. ISBN 0-451-52582-5.
-
Just when you need it, this
classic goes out of print. Second-hand copies at
reasonable prices are available from the link above or through abebooks.com. I wonder to what
extent this novel might have motivated Heinlein to write For Us, The Living (February 2004) a few years later. There are
interesting parallels between Lewis's authoritarian dystopia and
the 1944–1950 dictatorial interregnum in Heinlein's novel. Further,
one of the utopian reformers Lewis mocks is Upton Sinclair, of whom
Heinlein was a committed follower at the time, devoting much of the
latter part of For Us, The Living to an exposition of
Sinclair's economic system.
March 2004 