The Last American (novel)

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.

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.

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.