Babbitt

Babbitt is Sinclair Lewis's savage and hilarious satire of middle-class American life—a novel so influential that its protagonist's name became a dictionary word for the smug, conformist businessman. First published in 1922, it helped earn Lewis the Nobel Prize for Literature and remains one of the most penetrating portraits of American society ever written.
George F. Babbitt is a prosperous real estate broker in the fictional city of Zenith, a booming metropolis somewhere in the American heartland. He has a Dutch Colonial house, a family, a business, and membership in all the right clubs. He believes fervently in the Republican Party, Prohibition (while keeping his own supply of gin), and the sacred duty of Boosting—the relentless promotion of business, progress, and civic pride.
But beneath Babbitt's backslapping conformity lurks a vague discontent. He dreams of escape—to a fairy child who visits his sleep, to adventures he can barely articulate. When he attempts a half-hearted rebellion, taking up with bohemians and questioning the assumptions of his tribe, he discovers just how powerful the forces of conformity really are.
Lewis anatomizes every aspect of Babbitt's world with merciless precision: the Rotary Club platitudes, the real estate jargon, the worship of mechanical gadgets, the terror of independent thought. Yet the novel transcends mere mockery. Babbitt is not simply a buffoon but a tragic figure, dimly aware of the emptiness at the heart of his prosperity, unable to break free from the cage he has helped to build.
This LibriHouse.com edition presents all thirty-four chapters of Lewis's American classic.