In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, On the surface, everything is all right with Babbitt's world of the solid, successful businessman. But in reality, George F. Babbitt is a lonely, middle-aged man. He doesn't understand his family, has an unsuccessful attempt at an affair, and is almost financially ruined when he dares to voice sympathy for some striking workers. Babbitt finds that his only safety lies deep in the fold of those who play it safe. He is a man who has added a new word to our language: a "Babbitt," meaning someone who conforms unthinkingly, a sheep.
"It's common in twentieth-century American fiction to decry the emptiness of middle-class life, and BABBITT has become the eponym of that theme. Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis is well served by narrator Adam Sims, who makes the shallow, hypocritical, money-grubbing George Babbitt more and more sympathetic as he learns--and struggles against--the limitations of his own nature. Sims deftly portrays the many moods of the protagonist and his friends and contacts in a bustling Midwestern city in the early 1920s. The pressures to conform and to be financially successful seem to be deeply ingrained in the American psyche, and this audiobook portrays the despair that often results. The rise and fall of Babbitt's rebellion come close to tragedy. D.M.H. � AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine"
