Arrowsmith

This satirical novel by the Nobel Prize–winning author of It Can’t Happen Here examines medicine in the modern world through the eyes of an idealistic man.

The assistant of a small-town midwestern doctor, young Martin Arrowsmith is fascinated with the contents of Gray’s Anatomy. Eager to pursue an adventurous career in medicine and science, he eventually sets off for medical school, where he hopes to dedicate himself to research. But as Martin progresses through life, he encounters qualities in humans more troublesome than any of the specimens he examines under a microscope.

Happiness almost eludes him until his mentor offers him a post at a prestigious institute—which soon sends Martin to a plague ravaged Caribbean island. There he must show what he is truly made of . . .

A perennial favorite of medical students to this day, Arrowsmith won author Sinclair Lewis the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, which he declined.
“Beyond doubt the best of Mr. Lewis’s novels . . . Absorbing and illuminating.” —The Spectator