Word: budd
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Despite an almost universal and merciless drubbing by critics, the first eight Lanny Budd novels of Upton Sinclair sold 1,340,139 copies in the U.S. The ninth should do as well, for it is exactly like the others...
...Lanny Budd books have been published or are being published in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Holland, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, Switzerland and (in a condensed form) the Soviet Union. With a picture of the U.S. which Europeans, especially Social Democrats, find entirely understandable, Sinclair is one of the two or three most popular American writers abroad...
Socialist Superman. It is impossible to outline the story of the whole series (or even of a single volume) without making it seem ridiculous. The books have to do with the adventures of a Socialist hero named Lanny Budd, the illegitimate son of a Connecticut arms manufacturer, born in Paris and educated in Europe, wealthy, handsome, courageous, sensitive, gifted and a true friend of the workingman...
...Lanny Budd, like Vincent Sheean and John Gunther, meets all the great people of the world; he races about the continent of Europe on secret missions for President Roosevelt, like Harry Hopkins and Robert D. Murphy; he broods about the decay of contemporary civilization, like Henry Adams and Lincoln Steffens; he foresees what is going to happen with uncanny clairvoyance and advises people, especially President Roosevelt, with such telling effect that they come to depend on him for most of their information; he is always on the scene when great events are in the making-in Paris...
...work editing Mechanix Illustrated, ran its circulation up from 216,000 to 440,000. Then he was handed True and told to make it a "general magazine for men." He tossed out the horror tales, switched to slick paper, went hunting for good writers (C. S. Forester, Budd Schulberg, Lucian Cary) and began paying them good prices. Last fall he sent Richard (Guadalcanal Diary) Tregaskis off to write a round-the-world diary (at $2,000 an entry, plus expenses) for True. "For stories we really want," says Williams, "we'll outbid anybody, even the Saturday Evening Post...