What would happen if the US were a dictatorship?

"That Can't Happen Here" is a political satire that describes the rural and provincial America that emerges after the stock market crash of 1929. The characters and events that are related in the novel are like mirror games of the real ones in an America in which Roosevelt loses the presidential elections, and a totalitarian party takes power at a decisive moment in the history of the 20th century, with the rise of totalitarianism in Europe and the New Deal still not fully implemented.

The novel tells the story of the editor of a Vermont newspaper, Doremus Jessup, and his opposition to the presidential candidate Buzz Windrip, who behind a populist and demagogic speech, supported by supposed American ideals, hides his true intention of creating a totalitarian society in the image of the European ones but with North American features.

The book includes a detailed glossary by Amaya Bozal in which, deconstructing the game of mirrors, we can appreciate the great variety of names, facts and dates that make this novel almost an underground and countercultural history of the United States. When Sinclair Lewis wrote "That Can't Happen Here" he had good reason to believe that what he heard, saw or read might end up like this fascist fable in Liberty Country.