Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry isn’t suited to be a lawyer, so he becomes a preacher instead. Although he experiences a variety of failures, and even more successes, Gantry ultimately finds this new career path suits him very well indeed—despite his drinking and womanizing. Throughout his time as a preacher Gantry progresses through the hierarchies of the Baptist and Methodist churches, dabbles in revivalism and “New Thought,” and even experiments with politics, all the while emerging from scandals relatively unscathed and ready to move onward and upward once again. Sinclair Lewis published the satirical Elmer Gantry in 1927 much to the dismay of the religious community. It was denounced from the pulpit, banned by many, and even engendered threats of violence. Despite this—or perhaps because of it—it went on to become a massive success and the best selling novel of that year. One of the most savage satirical assaults against institutionalized religion and its hypocrisy in American literature, Elmer Gantry continues to be a window into a particularly important aspect of American history. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Arrowsmith has been inspirational for several generations of med students. Martin Arrowsmith agonizes over his career and life decisions never sure if he’s making the correct descisions. While the book details Arrowsmith's pursuit of the noble ideals of medical research for the benefit of mankind and of selfless devotion to the care of patients, Lewis throws many less noble temptations and self deceptions in Arrowsmith’s path. The attractions of financial security, recognition, even wealth and power distract Arrowsmith from his original plan to follow in the footsteps of his first mentor, Max Gottlieb, a brilliant but abrasive bacteriologist. A powerful novel that asks more questions than it answers. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Elmer Gantry is a novel that presents aspects of the religious activity of America in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. The novel's protagonist, the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, is initially attracted by booze and easy money (though he eventually renounces tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. After various forays into evangelism, he becomes a successful Methodist minister despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.

Called “God’s angry man” for his unyielding demands in pursuit of personal and artistic freedom, Oscar-winning filmmaker Richard Brooks brought us some of the mid-twentieth century’s most iconic films, including Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar. “The important thing,” he once remarked, “is to write your story, to make it believable, to make it live.” His own life story has never been fully chronicled, until now. Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks restores to importance the career of a prickly iconoclast who sought realism and truth in his films. Douglass K. Daniel explores how the writer-director made it from the slums of Philadelphia to the heights of the Hollywood elite, working with the top stars of the day, among them Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons, Sidney Poitier, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, and Diane Keaton. Brooks dramatized social issues and depicted characters in conflict with their own values, winning an Academy Award for his Elmer Gantry screenplay and earning nominations for another seven Oscars for directing and screenwriting. Tough as Nails offers illuminating insights into Brooks’s life, drawing on unpublished studio memos and documents and interviews from stars and colleagues, including Poitier, director Paul Mazursky, and Simmons, who was married to Brooks for twenty years. Daniel takes readers behind the scenes of Brooks’s major films and sheds light on their making, their compromises, and their common threads. Tough as Nails celebrates Brooks’s vision while adding to the critical understanding of his works, their flaws as well as their merits, and depicting the tumults and trends in the life of a man who always kept his own compass. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Carol Milford dreams of living in a small, rural town. But Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, isn't the paradise she'd imagined. First published in 1920, this unabridged edition of the Sinclair Lewis novel is an American classic, considered by many to be his most noteworthy and lasting work. As a work of social satire, this complex and compelling look at small-town America in the early 20th century has earned its place among the classics.

The actress and singer explores her life and career, examining "the real flesh-and-blood Shirley Jones, not just the movie star or Mrs. Partridge"--Dust jacket flap.

A drunken womanizer succeeds as a preacher in 1920s evangelical America in this satire by the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Main Street. Elmer Gantry is unsure what do to with his future. The captain of the college football team, he doesn’t care much for his classes or his uptight classmates, but he does enjoy smoking, drinking, and women. Then a preacher comes to town, inviting Elmer to a revival meeting, and it places him on a path to greatness. The silver-tongued Elmer sets out to save souls as a preacher, but he remains a narcissistic, self-indulgent, shallow, and philandering man. As he ascends to power within the church, many souls suffer in the hypocrite’s wake . . . First published in 1926, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers across the United States. A landmark portrait of 1920s America, it is one of the greatest, most penetrating and vital satires ever.

Elmer, the patchwork elephant, plays an amusing trick on his grey elephant friends.

Literary agent Joe Allston, the central character of Stegner's novel All the Little Live Things, is now retired and, in his own words, 'just killing time until time gets around to killing me.' His parents and his only son are long dead, leaving him with neither ancestors nor descendants, tradition nor ties. His job, trafficking the talent of others, had not been his choice. He passes through life as a spectator. A postcard from an old friend causes Allston to return to the journals of a trip he and his wife had taken years before, a journey to his mother's birthplace, where he'd sought a link with the past. The memories of that trip, both grotesque and poignant, move through layers of time and meaning, and reveal that Joe Allston isn't quite spectator enough. Wallace Stegner was the author of, among other works of fiction, Remembering Laughter (1973); The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943); Joe Hill (1950); All the Little Live Things (1967, Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star (1961); Angle of Repose (1971, Pulitzer Prize); Recapitulation (1979); Crossing to Safety (1987); and Collected Stories (1990). His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954); Wolf Willow (1963); The Sound of Mountain Water (essays, 1969); The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard deVoto (1964); American Places (with Page Stegner, 1981); and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three short stories have won O.Henry prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.