It Can't Happen Here (Summarized Edition)

Set in Depression-era America, It Can't Happen Here tracks the rise of Senator "Buzz" Windrip and the corrosion of civic life as witnessed by editor Doremus Jessup. Lewis blends newspapery briskness with corrosive satire and documentary inserts—platforms, decrees, staged trials—to show how populist spectacle congeals into routine repression. Composed in 1935 amid the interwar crisis, it dissects l...