Dragon's Teeth

Rating:
Summary: Idealism Run Amok
Review: This 1943 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Upton Sinclair captures the spirit and drama of events in Europe leading up to World War II. The story begins with a complex portrait of life and philosophy among the leisure class between the great wars of the first half of the Twentieth century. Lanny Budd is the playboy son of a munitions manufacturer married to a wealthy American heiress. His Socialist political beliefs reflect those of the Sinclair himself who incidently ran as the Socialist Party candidate for governor in California in 1934. Lanny Budd's connections eventually put him in touch directly with the highest leadership of the Nazi movement as that ideology overtakes the political arena in the mid 1930s in Germany.
This is a good story for those of us in the Twenty-first century as it shows what happens when political idealism runs unchecked.