ADAMS, HENRY: _Democracy_ (1880). Madeleine Lee goes to Washington
to learn about democracy and government. Disillusioned by its state
and by Senator Ratcliffe.
ADAMS, SAMUEL: _Revelry_ (1926). Fictionalized version of Harding
era’s corruption.
AMSBARRY, MARY ANNE: _Caesar’s Angel_ (1952). Rise and fall of a
tainted young politician who tries to deal with criminal element in
a state adjacent to Illinois.
BRADBURY, RAY: _Fahrenheit 451_ (1953). A book-destroying
Fireman turns against the post-atomic war regime of a horrific,
cultureless, totalitarian United States.
BURNETT, FRANCES HODGSON: _Through One Administration_ (1914).
Innocent Bertha Amory’s husband uses her charm to lobby for his
schemes in late nineteenth-century Washington.
CHURCHILL, WINSTON: _Coniston_ (1906). Jethro Bass’s rise to
control of a New England state through mortgage holdings and
political deals in the post-Jacksonian era.
----: _Mr. Crewe’s Career_ (1908). Twenty years after Bass’s death
the railroads exercise tighter control. Signs of public opinion
being marshalled for action.
COE, CHARLES FRANCIS: _Ashes_ (1952). Contemporary politics and
corruption plus murder.
CRAWFORD, F. MARION: _An American Politician_ (1884). Reformer John
Harrington’s excursion into politics of the late eighties under
Marquis of Queensberry rules.
DEFOREST, JOHN WILLIAM: _Honest John Vane_ (1875). A weak
congressman seduced into corruption by a satanic lobbyist and a
money-hungry wife during Reconstruction.
----: _Playing the Mischief_ (1876). Attractive Josie Murray gets a
fraudulent relief bill passed by a corrupt Congress amidst unsavory
Washingtonians.
DOS PASSOS, JOHN: _Adventures of a Young Man_ (1938). Glenn
Spotswood’s development into Communist organizer and his death for
Trotskyism in the Spanish Civil War.
----: _Number One_ (1943). Huey Long-like Chuck Crawford carries
on as Tyler Spotswood goes to jail for him in atonement for his
collusion in a corrupt career.
----: _The Grand Design_ (1949). Panoramic novel of New Deal
and wartime Washington. Conflicts of personalities, ideals, and
politics--national and international.
ELLISON, RALPH: _The Invisible Man_ (1953). A young Negro’s
crack-up under prejudice in North and South and disillusionment
after whole-souled Communist Work.
FARRELL, JAMES T.: _Yet Other Waters_ (1952). Novelist Bernard Carr
learns that the Communists dictate to artists too, then leaves
despite twinges and “the treatment.”
FORD, JAMES L.: _Hot Corn Ike_ (1923). Local politics with national
implications in two areas of late nineteenth-century New York.
FORD, PAUL LEICESTER: _The Honorable Peter Stirling_ (1894). Poor
Man’s Friend to Governor of New York despite vicissitudes as love
and virtue triumph.
GALLICO, PAUL: _Trial by Terror_ (1952). Blackmail frees an
American conditioned into a robot for a Hungarian spy trial while
American diplomats send notes of protest.
GARLAND, HAMLIN: _A Spoil of Office_ (1897). Iowans Bradley Talcott
and Ida Wilbur fight for the farmers in and out of Congress in the
seventies.
GLASGOW, ELLEN: _The Voice of the People_ (1900). Lincolnesque
Governor Nick Burr fights a corrupt organization and meets his
death in post-Reconstruction Virginia.
HEMINGWAY, ERNEST: _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ (1943). Conflict of
ideologies in Spain as anti-Fascist, non-Communist Robert Jordan
dies fighting for what he believes in.
JAMES, HENRY: _The Princess Casamassima_ (1886). Suicide frees
displaced Hyacinth Robinson from serving London revolutionaries
whose cause he no longer supports.
LANCLEY, ADRIA LOCKE: _A Lion Is in the Streets_ (1945). Another
Huey Long novel.
LEWIS, SINCLAIR: _It Can’t Happen Here_ (1936). The horrors of a
Fascist America.
LONDON, JACK: _The Iron Heel_ (1908). America under the Fascist
Oligarchy seen in retrospect from the 26th century when near-Utopia
is well-established.
MCCARTHY, MARY: _The Oasis_ (1949). The founding of a seemingly
successful utopian colony which begins to wither from lack of
feeling of relevance and conviction.
MAILER, NORMAN: _Barbary Shore_ (1951). A special revolutionary
socialism to be saved for “the day” is passed from one to another
of a group of weird characters.
MASTERS, EDGAR LEE: _Children of the Market Place_ (1922). Spirited
biography and defense of Stephen A. Douglas set against a growing
America by a shadowy narrator.
MANCHESTER, WILLIAM: _City of Anger_ (1953). A series of tragedies
growing out of the “numbers racket” and corruption in a city that
looks and sounds like Baltimore.
PHILLIPS, DAVID GRAHAM: _The Plum Tree_ (1905). Harvey Sayler
gains control of a huge lobby and becomes a President-maker before
disillusionment sets in.
RUSSELL, WILLIAM: _A Wind Is Rising_ (1950). On the fringes of
the political novel. Negro sharecroppers dominated by a hostile
socio-political economic system.
SHAW, IRWIN: _The Troubled Air_ (1951). One man crushed between
self-appointed judges and unscrupulous Communists in a fight
against blacklists and guilt by association.
SHELLABARGER, SAMUEL: _Prince of Foxes_ (1947). Running duel of
wits and weapons between Borgia and one of his captains. Melange of
romance, swordplay, and politics.
SHIRER, WILLIAM L.: _Stranger Come Home_ (1954). A radio
commentator and a Foreign Service career man are ruined by Senator
O’Brien and perjured testimony.
SINCLAIR, UPTON: _Oil!_ (1926). The making of a millionaire
radical, son of an oil tycoon destroyed by oil scandals in the
Harding era he helped to create.
----: _Boston_ (1928). Defense of Sacco and Vanzetti with admixture
of fiction.
----: _Presidential Agent_ (1945). Everybody’s confidante, Lanny
Budd helps make and interpret modern political history up to and
through Munich.
STEINBECK, JOHN: _In Dubious Battle_ (1936). A glimpse of Communist
aims and methods in organizing and directing strike violence for
Party purposes.
STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER: _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ (1852). The most
effective political instrument in the history of the novel.
TOURGÉE, ALBION W.: _A Fool’s Errand_ (1879). A Northerner tries
to buck the tide of a resurgent South during Reconstruction. Acute
criticism of the Federal program.
----: _Bricks Without Straw_ (1880). More of the same with greater
violence and more analysis of the political structure of the
pre-war and post-war South.
WARREN, ROBERT PENN: _All the King’s Men_ (1946). The hectic life
and violent death of a Southern dictator with sharp portraits of
his effect upon those around him.
WELLER, GEORGE: _The Crack in the Column_ (1949). An American flier
is introduced to global politics as Communist Greeks fight the
British during World War II.
WHITLOCK, BRAND: _The 13th District_ (1902). The progressive moral
and political decline of a mid-western moth fascinated by the
illuminated capitol dome.
WILDER, THORNTON: _The Ides of March_ (1948). Caesar’s career
through Roman eyes.