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=                     The_Last_American_(novel)                      =
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                            Introduction
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'The Last American' is a short illustrated future history novel by
John Ames Mitchell (1845-1918).


                              Overview
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First published in 1889, the novel is the fictional journal of a
Persian explorer named Khan-Li, who sails across the Atlantic in 2951
and rediscovers America. Beginning around 1960, the world was
devastated by drastic climatic changes, with North America becoming
virtually uninhabitable; these had later partially reversed
themselves, though the Persian explorers find the East Coast at the
latitude of New York unbearably hot. Most of the narrative consists of
a satirical and unflattering view of late 19th-century American
society through the eyes of the Persians, who are simultaneously
impressed by its grandeur and contemptuous of social developments
Mitchell did not approve of; these included the equality of the sexes
and the presence in America of the Irish, who apparently came to
dominate it after a "Massacre of the Protestants" in 1927. During its
final decades, the US had been ruled by a "Murphy Dynasty," with the
Persians finding a late coin from 1957 bearing a harp on one side and
the portrait of an Irish dictator on the other.

The 1893 edition is a small hardcover book with 78 numbered pages. It
is illustrated with half-page etchings inserted into the text and a
few full-page etchings. One shows a reconstructed street scene with
"costumes and manner of riding... taken from metal plates now in the
museum at Teheran"; clearly indicating newspaper advertisements from a
print shop. Another, "The Wooden God," is a cigar store Indian; and
"The Ruins of the Great Temple" shows a devastated Capitol Building.


                              Analysis
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The book is, on the one hand, a satirical look at ways and customs of
the United States as reconstructed from the ruins and the Persians'
own spotty histories of the long-past era. It also seems to be a spoof
of the archaeological discoveries that were being made at the time.
All of the Persians have farcical names (Nōz-yt-ahl is the name of a
historian, for example) and often speak in breathless wonder at what
they see.

'The Last American' is among the anti-utopian disaster literature
published in the late 19th century, along with Ignatius Donnelly's
'Caesar's Column' and Park Benjamin Jr.'s 'The End of New York'.

Montesquieu's 'Persian Letters' may have provided some degree of
inspiration. In its own turn, the book seems to have been a rough
model for Aldous Huxley's 'Ape and Essence'.


                             Dedication
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The dedication on the novella changed between the first edition in
1889 and the edition of 1902: the first through eighth editions have
the following dedication:


TO THE AMERICAN WHO IS MORE THAN SATISFIED WITH HIMSELF AND HIS
COUNTRY THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.


...In the 1902 edition, this was changed to:


TO THOSE THOUGHTFUL PERSIANS WHO CAN READ A WARNING IN THE SUDDEN RISE
AND SWIFT EXTINCTION OF A FOOLISH PEOPLE THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED


License
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_American_(novel)