Scary Presidential Novels

History teaches us that not all presidents do justice to their office. So does fiction. In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here,” about a senator who, upon becoming POTUS, goes rogue and launches a Hitler-esque regime. I re-read the novel and listened to the audio version, which you, too, can hear at The Fictional Cafe website. It’s in two parts:

Fictional history, so to speak, repeated itself thirty years later in Fletcher Knebel’s novel, “Night of Camp David.” Knebel, a political writer long well known for another novel, “Seven Days in May,” concerning an attempted military coup, followed in Lewis’s footsteps with a president who is perceived by several fellow politicians as mentally unstable. They conspire to get him to step down, and a curious story ensues.

“Night of Camp David” was reissued last year in a paperback version and, if you have any interest in the subject matter, it is well worth the read.

So here we are, fifty-four years on from Knebel’s novel. Is anyone taking up their quill to write the next instalment?