Book summary

In ARROWSMITH, Martin Arrowsmith fulfills a lifelong dream of becoming a physician with a passion for research. Combatting the forces of ignorance and greed, he relentlessly pursues scientific truth, even in the face of his own personal tragedy. ARROWSMITH (1925) was Sinclair Lewis's most praised novel and won him the Pulitzer Prize, which he refused. In ELMER GANTRY, Sinclair Lewis's satire of fundamentalist religion, the hero is not unlike today's corrupt and greedy TV evangelists. A charlatan and womanizer, Gantry begins as a Baptist, and rises to become the head of a Methodist church. Lewis's novel, which scandalized the churchgoing public when it was published in 1927, reveals the hypocrisy he found in organized religion. DODSWORTH tells the tale of Sam Dodsworth, a prosperous car manufacturer, who retires and travels to Europe with his shallow, affected wife, Fran. Their marriage is in trouble, and Fran tires of Sam's earnest American naiveté and takes up with an aristocrat much younger than she. When the man's snobbish mother forbids her son's marriage to such a woman, Fran begs Dodsworth to return to her. He, however, having seen her real nature and found a woman more appreciative of his good qualities, divorces Fran and lives permanently in Europe with his new wife.