"Arrowsmith", by Sinclair LewisIn the novel "Arrowsmith", by Sinclair Lewis, written in 1925, you can read about the lack of idealism in our world in science, found most often in the medical profession (Paper, 1). This book describes the times in terms of non-idealistic scientific progress, especially in the medical field. Our scientists couldn't come up with their own ideas, and our progress was going nowhere, fast. Even though today we are advancing so rapidly that we have no choice but to move and experiment, there is no time to slow down and copy old works. Sinclair Lewis also combines his life and that of a graduate microbiologist, whom he interviewed to help him write this book, into his main character, Dr. Martin Arrowsmith. All this is contained in the book "Arrowsmith". Sinclair Lewis was born February 7, 1885, in the town of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to his generous parents, Emma Kermont Lewis and Dr. Edwin J. Lewis. At a young age Sinclair read a lot in elementary school and continued his studies for many years (Grebstein, 16). Lewis studied at Yale University from 1903 to 1906. There he studied literary writings and worked to help him become a writer. His father didn't agree with his career choice, but he went ahead and did what he wanted most: writing. He was once so disgusted with his father that he ran away and tried to join the Spanish-American War as a drummer (Cobletz, 248). He didn't get far; his father captured him before he left the city. He returned to collage, and even through collage, Lewis still read many books. One professor is quoted as saying, "He drew more books from the Yale library than, I think, any undergraduate before or since." Lewis was known to read books by authors such as Hardy, Meredith, James, Howells, Austen, Bronte, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Gogol, Flaubert, Zola, Huneker, Pinero, Jones, Shaw, d'Annunzio, Sudermann, Yeats, George Moore, Nietzsche, Haeckel, Huxley, Moody, Marx, Gorky, Blake, Pater, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Rossetti, Swinburne, Clough and Ibsen. All of these authors were influential to him, but none more so than the famous H. G. Wells (Grebstein 24). He accomplished all of this while in college while holding two or more jobs at the same time and writing for several newspapers along with his books that he wrote. In October 1906 he left school for a few months and stayed with his brother in his utopian colony in New Jersey. A few months later he remembered the work ethic his father had taught him, went back to school and graduated 1907.