Babbitt

I'm reading Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. Published in 1922, it provides amazing contrast to our current times. Individual towns across America were proudly creating themselves to compete with big American cities and to be uniform, to give citizens the sense that they were at home anywhere in America. Everything was American made; the boom was on. Babbitt is not a happy man; he does what he feels he is supposed to do. There are the powerful and the less powerful, but there is a sense that America is beginning its ascent to the top of a productive country, with pride in producing its own goods.