The Man Who Knew Coolidge (Summarized Edition)
Enriched edition. 1920s satire of middle-class follies, Coolidge-era boasting, shaky business ethics, and the hollow American DreamBy Sinclair Lewis
Length2h 21m
About this audiobook
Published in 1928, The Man Who Knew Coolidge is a sequence of comic monologues in which Lowell Schmaltz—a tireless salesman and civic booster—fills train compartments, lobbies, and Rotary luncheons with unstoppable patter. Claiming acquaintance with President Calvin Coolidge, Schmaltz touts self-made virtue, efficiency, and "constructive" citizenship, exposing the buzzwords and anxieties of Coolidge-era prosperity. Lewis's ventriloquism captures American vernacular: run-on boasts, malapropisms, and moral evasions continue the satire of Babbitt and Elmer Gantry, but in a more compressed, oral, vaudevillian form. Sinclair Lewis, Minnesota-born journalist-turned-novelist and first American Nobel laureate (1930), built his fame by anatomizing myths of business success and small-town virtue. His lecture tours, newsroom stints, and notebooks of salesmen's jargon supplied material for Schmaltz's voice. Writing after Babbitt and amid Coolidge's celebrated taciturnity, Lewis condenses a culture of boosterism into one garrulous speaker who cannot stop selling—least of all himself. Readers of American satire, cultural historians of the 1920s, and students of rhetoric will find this book an exacting, hilarious primer in how language manufactures consent. Read it alongside Babbitt for a sharper profile of the era's business creed, or aloud to savor the timing. Few works more economically expose the comic pathos of the Coolidge age.
Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the author's voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readable—distilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Author Biography · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.
Audiobook details
GenreHumor
Length2 hrs 21 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateApr 3, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
5Author Biography
2Introduction
6The Man Who Knew Coolidge
3Synopsis
7Analysis
4Historical Context
8Reflection
The Greatest Works of Sinclair LewisSinclair Lewis90h 50m$2 · $0.00
Main Street & BabbittSinclair Lewis34h 43m$1 · $0.00
Main StreetSinclair Lewis20h 38m$2 · $0.00
Die HauptstraßeSinclair Lewis16h 15m$1 · $0.00
The Trail of the HawkSinclair Lewis10h 59m$2 · $0.00
Sinclair Lewis: Die großen RomaneSinclair Lewis109h 6m$2 · $0.00
The Complete Novels of Sinclair LewisSinclair Lewis261h 58m$1 · $0.00
The JobSinclair Lewis11h 47m$1 · $0.00
Das KunstwerkSinclair Lewis16h 10m$2 · $0.00
MantrapSinclair Lewis7h 50m$1 · $0.00
The Willow WalkSinclair Lewis1h 29m$1 · $0.00
BabbittSinclair Lewis15h 37m$1 · $0.00
Elmer GantrySinclair Lewis20h 44m$2 · $0.00
MantrapSinclair Lewis9h 13m$1 · $0.00
Work of ArtSinclair Lewis13h 10m$2 · $0.00
Elmer GantrySinclair Lewis19h 20m$1 · $0.00
ArrowsmithSinclair Lewis20h 43m$2 · $0.00
Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle ManSinclair Lewis10h 11m$2 · $0.00
Main StreetSinclair Lewis20h 38m$2 · $0.00
The Jeeves and Wooster Stories: The Complete Collection (33 Books)P. G. Wodehouse21h 57m$15 · $0.00
Birdie & HarlowTaylor Wolfe7h 50m$26 · $0.00
Santa's HusbandDaniel Kibblesmith, A P. Quach5m$4 · $0.00
The Facts of MidlifeRobyn Peterman4h 49m$15
Chaos in a CoupeDivya Dugar9h 18m$18 · $0.00
The Life of DaiDai Henwood, Jaquie Brown8h 2m$26 · $0.00
Poems of ParentingLoryn Brantz42m4 (1)$9 · $0.00
What If? 10th Anniversary EditionRandall Munroe7h 29m$23
Welcome to PawneeJim O'Heir6h 24m$24 · $0.00
Going PostalTerry Pratchett13h 36m$33 · $0.00
Mapp & Lucia: Complete SeriesE. F. Benson59h 54m$2 · $0.00
The Complete Chronicles of Barsetshire: (The Warden + Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset)Anthony Trollope140h 13m$1 · $0.00
Woman UninterruptedBrodie Kane7h 1m$24 · $0.00
Hot Cowgirl Sh*tLacie Evans2h 15m$15
The Complete Novels of Mark Twain - 12 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition)Mark Twain155h 29m$2 · $0.00
You Will Get Through This NightDaniel Howell6h 56m$24 · $0.00
My Dear HamiltonStephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie23h 7m$46 · $0.00
The Night Before Christmas at Dunder MifflinBrian Baumgartner, Ben Silverman6m$4 · $0.00
Pride & PrejudiceJane Austen14h 52m$1 · $0.00
The Complete Works of SakiSaki, H. H. Munro52h 37m$2 · $0.00
You may also like
Is sex necessary?E.B. White, James Thurber3h 3m$2 · $0.00
The Wild Body. A Soldier of Humour and Other StoriesPercy Wyndham Lewis7h 24m$2 · $0.00
The Complete CynicEthel Watts Mumford Grant, Oliver Herford, Addison Mizner29m$2 · $0.00
The Roycroft Dictionary, Concocted by Ali Baba and the Bunch on Rainy DaysElbert Hubbard1h 58m$2 · $0.00
Mark Twain's SpeechesMark Twain12h 22m$24 · $0.00
Gullible's Travels, EtcRing Lardner3h 6m$2 · $0.00
Let Your Mind Alone! And Other More or Less Inspirational PiecesJames Thurber8h$1 · $0.00
Let's Play DoctorMark Leyner, Billy Goldberg1h 25m$16 · $0.00
Race Me in a Lobster SuitKelly Mahon2h 55m$17 · $0.00
Mince PieChristopher Morley5h 37m$2.30
Mr. Punch at Home: The Comic Side of Domestic LifeVarious2h 9m$1 · $0.00
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1Mark Twain24h 44m$30
Seven Kinds of People You Find in BookshopsShaun Bythell2h 1m$15 · $0.00
Imperfectly ProperPeter Donovan6h 28m$2 · $0.00
Chapters from My AutobiographyMark Twain11h 4m$15 · $0.00
Gullible's Travels etc.Ring Lardner4h 50m$2.30
Gullible’s TravelsCash Peters8h 11m$17 · $0.00
BabbittSinclair Lewis11h 55m$23
The Diary of a Nobody (Unabridged)George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith5h 14m$2 · $0.00
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, GentlemanLaurence Sterne19h 58m$2.30