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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a children's book by L. Frank Baum. It was originally illustrated by W.W. Denslow and published in 1900 in Chicago by the George M. Hill company. Since then the book has been reprinted countless times, often under the shortened title The Wizard of Oz. The story chronicles the adventures of a girl named Dorothy who is carried by a cyclone to the Land of Oz, where she teams up with an animated Scarecrow, a man of tin and a cowardly lion on a quest to meet the elusive Wizard of Oz. The tale is one of the best-known American stories, both in the United States and worldwide. The book has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, most famously by MGM in 1939. There have been many sequels published, as well as several pastiches and alternative versions.

The book has been in public domain since 1956.

Summary

Dorothy Gale is a young girl who lives on a Kansas farm with her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, and her little dog Toto. On her way inside one day, a tornado appears and Dorothy is unable to reach the storm cellar in time, so she takes shelter with Toto in the farmhouse. It is caught up in the tornado, and deposited in a grassy field in the country of the Munchkins, killing the Wicked Witch of the East, who had established a reign of terror over the Munchkins.

The Good Witch of the North comes with the Munchkins to greet Dorothy, and gives her the Silver Shoes the Wicked Witch of the East had been wearing when she was killed (her death is explained in The Tin Woodman of Oz as due to her being old and dried up before Oz became a fairyland). In order to return to Kansas, the Good Witch of the North recommends: "Let Dorothy go to the City of Emeralds" and ask the Wizard of Oz to help her. The Good Witch of the North also kisses Dorothy on the forehead, stating that no one will harm a person who has been kissed by her. On her way down the Yellow Brick Road, Dorothy meets some remarkable characters: she liberates the Scarecrow from the pole he's hanging on, restores the mobility of the Tin Woodman, and encourages the Cowardly Lion to journey with her and Toto to the Emerald City. The Scarecrow wants to get a brain, the Tin Woodman a heart, and the Cowardly Lion courage; and they are convinced by Dorothy that the Wizard can help them too.

When they arrive at the Emerald City, the companions must wear special spectacles to keep the brilliance of the Emerald City from blinding them; wearing them, everything appears in different shades of green. They are told that the Wizard will only see one of them a day, and that the guard himself has never seen him! When each traveler meets the Wizard, he appears each time as someone or something different. To Dorothy, the Wizard is a giant head; the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman; the Tin Woodman sees a ravenous beast; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire. The Wizard agrees to help each of them, but his help is conditional; one of them must kill the Wicked Witch of the West, who rules over the Winkie Country.

Once Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion arrive in the Winkie Country, the Wicked Witch sends wolves, crows, bees, and then her Winkie soldiers to attack them; but each threat is dispatched by the travelers. Then, using the power of the Golden Cap, the Witch summons the Winged Monkeys to destroy the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman but to bring her Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion alive. The Winged Monkeys can't attack Dorothy anyway due to the Witch of the North's kiss, so they succeed in their mission; the final one the Wicked Witch can command due to the Cap's enchantment.

Dorothy is forced to work as a maid to the Wicked Witch, while the Lion is pressed into service to pull her chariot. But the Lion refuses to do so, because Dorothy sneaks him food every night. Dorothy is also left unharmed because she wears the Silver Shoes that have undefined magic powers. When the Wicked Witch gains one of the shoes by trickery, Dorothy in anger grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the Wicked Witch, who begins to melt. The Winkies rejoice at being freed of her tyranny, and they help to reassemble the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. So enamored are the Winkies of the Tin Woodman that they ask him to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas.

The long walk from the Wicked Witch's former palace to the Emerald City is alleviated by Dorothy's use of the Golden Cap, which summons the Winged Monkeys to carry her and her companions to the Emerald City. The King of the Monkeys relates how he and his mischievous people were forced to choose between submission or annihilation; through the Cap, they obeyed first Quelala, then the Wicked Witch, and now Dorothy herself.

When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz again, he tries to put them off. Only under threat of seeing the Winged Monkeys again (who under the Wicked Witch's command attacked him in the past) is the Wizard convinced to allow the travelers in to his throne room. Toto discovers a curtained side room away from the Wizard's throne. Pulling the curtain back, Toto reveals a wizened old man who had journeyed here himself long ago from Omaha. He once rose high in a balloon and then landed in Oz; when the people saw the letters "OZ" on the balloon (in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, we find they are his initials), they presumed he was their ruler and began building the Emerald City. Finding himself in a country of witches, the soon-to-be-designated Wizard saw the need to maintain anonymity—hence his appearances to Dorothy and the others, which are revealed as clever (for the dawn of the 20th century) special effects.

The Wizard tries to persuade the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion that what they lack are not brains or a heart or courage, but faith in themselves. But he still agrees to meet each of them and to give them (without their knowledge) a placebo which brings out the qualities they had all along. In order to help Dorothy and Toto get home, the Wizard realizes that he will have to take them home with him in the same hot air balloon in which he arrived. Revealing himself to the people of the Emerald City one last time, the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, by virtue of his brains, to rule in his stead. Just as they are rising into the air, however, Toto leaps from the basket after a cat and Dorothy goes after him, leaving the Wizard to rise and float away.

Dorothy turns to the Winged Monkeys to carry her and Toto home, but they cannot cross the desert surrounding Oz. The citizens of the Emerald City advise that Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, may be able to send Dorothy and Toto home. They, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion journey to Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country. Together they escape the Fighting Trees, dodge the Hammerheads, and tread carefully through the China Country. The Cowardly Lion kills a giant spider which is terrorizing the animals in a forest, and he agrees to return there to rule them after Dorothy returns to Kansas.

At Glinda's palace, the travelers are greeted warmly, and it is revealed by Glinda that Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The Silver Shoes she wears can take her anywhere she wishes to go. She tearfully embraces her friends—all of whom will be returned, through Glinda's use of the Golden Cap, to their respective sovereignties: the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman to the Winkie Country, and the Cowardly Lion to the forest. Then she will give the Cap to the king of the Winged Monkeys, so they will never be under its spell again. Dorothy and Toto return to Kansas and a joyful family reunion.

Interpretations

Editorial cartoonists have mined the book and its main characters for political cartoons, using for example famous lines about not being in Kansas anymore, or the mystery man behind the screen. Both Baum and Denslow had been actively involved in politics in the 1890s. Baum, who wrote many followup Oz books without a political theme, laughed at the the idea that the original story was an allegory for politics. 100 years after the book appeared, professional scholars, historians and economists often referred to the allegory, and a scholarly literature has grown up on the topic. Less support has been given to the ideas of psychologist Sheldon Kopp who argued in a 1970 article in Psychology Today that the story has parallels to the processes individuals undergo during psychological therapy; Madonna Kolbenschlag later took up this idea in her non-fiction book Lost in the Land of Oz. In his book The Zen of Oz: Ten Spiritual Lessons from Over the Rainbow, Joey Green explores the parallels between The Wizard of Oz and Zen Buddhism (this is not as far-fetched as it may first seem, as Frank Baum was greatly influenced by his mother-in-law, who took an interest in eastern mysticism).

For additional interpretations, see:

• Oz as a spiritual allegory
• http://www.turnmeondeadman.net/OZ/Intro.html

The book as a parable on politics

Among historians and economists the most widely accepted theory is that the Baum-Denslow book can be seen as an allegorical commentary on U.S. politics at the end of the 19th century. The seed for this theory was planted in 1963, when a high school history teacher named Henry Littlefield used the characters and events of The Wizard of Oz as metaphors to teach historical concepts. Together with his students, Littlefield drew parallels between historical events and events in the book, and eventually published these parallels in an article in the 1964 American Quarterly scholarly journal . Littlefield never claimed that Baum had purposefully planted these themes in his book, but he did point out that the book was written at exactly the same time these events were taking place.

Over the years, the idea captured the attention of many scholars, historians, economists, writers and journalists. Several writers expanded upon Littlefield's parallels, and soon the allegory was being analyzed in scholarly articles and textbooks in economics and history. The cartoons shown in this article prove that political cartoonists before 1900 used cyclones, farm wives, witches, scarecrows, dogs, lions and monkeys, etc. as political allegories. Baum and Denslow had recently seen these -- Puck and Judge were the most popular cartoon magazines of the day--and it seems likely they drew their inspiration from them. Editorial cartoonists have made heavy use of Oz imagery in political cartoons, as the Rogers 1906 cartoon of Hearst proves, and likewise this 1947 Berryman editorial cartoon.

For a more detailed history of this debate, see the following external articles:

• A history of the debate
• David Parker's article "The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a 'Parable on Populism'"; also in the Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians, vol. 15 (1994), pp. 49-63
• Littlefield's 1992 article on the subject
• Collection of material relating to Oz as a political allegory
• The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics, 2002 Review of the above and the academic context from the Journal of Economic Education.
• [1]] Rockoff, Hugh. "The 'Wizard of Oz' as a Monetary Allegory," Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 739-60.

For the bext defense of the allegory interpretation see the full-length scholarly book by an economics professor: The Historian's Wizard of Oz - Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory, edited by Ranjit S. Dighe, Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut 2002.

An outline of the allegory

Many of the events and characters of the book can be seen to stand for political events and ideas. Even the title has been interpreted as alluding to a political reality: oz. is an abbreviation for ounce, a unit familiar to those who fought for a 16 to 1 ounce ratio of silver to gold in the name of bimetallism.

The Kansas of the book depicts the hardship of rural life in America at the turn of the 20th century, right after the Panic of 1893. Dorothy is swept away to a fantasy version of America that represents the country's potential. Dorothy's powerful silver slippers (they were changed to ruby only in the film) and their superiority to the golden yellow brick road, perhaps the most dangerous route in American literature, reflect the intense political rhetoric of the era. Following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, the fraudulent world of greenback paper money, which only pretends to have value. Other allegorical aspects of the book include:

• Dorothy, naïve, young and simple, represents the American people. She is Everyman, led astray and who seeks the way back home.

• The cyclone reflects a political revolution that will transform the drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. The cyclone was used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval.

• The Munchkins are the little people--ordinary citizens. This 1897 Judge cartoon shows famous politicians as little people after they were on the losing side in the election.

• The Wicked Witch of the East represents Eastern industrial power, the bankers and factories of the East; her oppression of the Munchkins stands for the oppression of the little people, the average Americans, at the hands of these financial forces. The little people celebrate their liberation as a political event. Her silver slippers reflect the way the bankers of the East had suppressed the secret of prosperity, namely, the free coinage of silver.
• The good witches represent the northern and southern electoral votes, which a political coalition needs to win. The kiss represents the mandate of the voters.
• The Scarecrow represents the American farmer—although he has been persuaded that he is only a dumb hick, he possesses a strong common sense that needs only to be reinforced by self confidence.

More Characters

• The Tin Woodman is the industrialized worker, dehumanized by industrialization, just as the Tin Woodman little by little lost his natural body and had it replaced by metal; so he has lost his heart and cannot move without the help of farmers (Scarecrow); in reality he has a strong sense of cooperation and love, which needs only an infusion of self-confidence to be awakened. To secure a political revolution a coalition of Farmers and Workers was needed. The tin man was a common cartoon theme of the late 19th century, and often used in nonpolitical advertisements.

• The evil Wicked Witch of the West is much disputed by scholars. The biggest evil in 1900 were the Trusts, that were seizing control of little businesses -- just as the Witch was doing. The most popular solution in 1900 was to Dissolve the Trusts, which is what Dorothy does. Others see the Witch as representing Western political influence, particularly the power exerted by the growing railroad industries. Others view the Wicked Witch of the West as representing nature. For Americans living in the West, especially the Great Plains where Populism had its political base, Nature was a destructive force, something to struggle against. In particular, she represents the harsh dustbowl weather that plagued the American everyman farmer from time to time. This is why it is water that defeats the Wicked Witch of the West and heat in the form of fire is her weapon of choice. Rain in the West, ending drought, would mean that Nature is no longer a malign force.

• Uncle Henry was the archetypal farmer. In 1900 by far the most famous farmer in America was Henry Wallace, editor of the leading farm magazine (and grandfather of Franklin Roosevelt's second vice president, Henry A. Wallace.) Everyone called him "Uncle Henry."

• Aunt Em is a matter of some dispute. Baum did have an Aunt M, Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was a leader of the woman suffrage movement, but nothing about the book's character suggests suffrage interests.

• The Emerald City represents a greenback version of the national capital, and is modeled after the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, officially named World's Columbian Exposition, which dazzled millions as "The Great White City." It is "emerald" only because those in it wear green glasses and hence think it is made of a green jewel; just as paper greenbacks have value only because people pretend that it has value.

• The Cowardly Lion in some views represents politicians, possibly William Jennings Bryan, who were often accused of political cowardice. However, a more plausible interpretation is that the Lion (who has lost his nerve to exercise his role as the King of Beasts) represents the American people, who are the "King" of the USA, but who have lost their courage to take charge and exercise their true role.

• It has been suggested that Toto, a play on the word teetotalers, represents the Prohibitionists of the era, who were aligned with William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 and 1900 elections. But nothing in the story supports this strained interpretation.

• The Winged Monkeys (considering the racist imagery common at the time) are said to represent African-Americans, oppressed by an overbearing force and who are relieved to be free of that bondage when the force is terminated. Others see them as hired Pinkerton Agents who worked for the Trusts and hounded labor unions.

• The Wizard of Oz is the president, thought to be all-powerful, but in the end exposed as a clever charlatan. The book certainly portrays him as Oz's major political leader who uses clever deception to maintain his illusions. The "man behind the curtain" is a reference to automated store window displays of the sort famous at Christmas season in big city department stores; many people watching the fancy clockwork motions of animals and manikins thought there must be an operator behind the curtain pulling the levers to make them move. (Baum was the editor of the trade magazine read by window dressers.) Some readers have suggested he represents the apostles of paper money, which seems to be of value but is really worthless.

• The poppy fields possibly represent Americans' fear of opium, linked to China and "the Orient". The poppy fields are also often viewed as representing America's foray into imperialism in Asia. Populists railed against imperialism because it distracted the United States (as the poppy fields distracted Dorothy from her goal of reaching the Emerald City) from dealing with the domestic troubles after the Depression of 1893. (Sure, the nation was slowly recovering, but this is still politics).

Other Oz Books

In addition, a number of developments in later books in the Oz series are sometimes given as further evidence. The primary example of this is in the sixth book in the series, The Emerald City of Oz. In this story, Dorothy's aunt and uncle, who have never financially recovered from the tornado, lose their farm to the bank. Dorothy takes them to live in Oz where, it is explained, there are no poor people because there is no money. All property is effectively owned by the Queen of Oz and distributed fairly, and everyone works autonomously (without "cruel overseers") for the good of the community and in turn the community provides everyone with what they desire.

Many of these interpretations are strained. What is clear is that Dorothy is Everyman, the Scarecrow is the farmer, the Tin Woodman is labor, the Cowardly Lion is the American electorate, the Yellow Brick Road is the path of gold money, the Emerald City is the fantasy of paper money, and the saving silver slippers are the free coinage of silver.

Scholars' perspective on WOZ as political allegory

1 The remarkable number of political references that have been spotted in the 1900 book – as contrasted with few in subsequent Oz books. The Baumites are in denial and say these are all coincidences. Scholars argue that Baum had been a political editor in the 1890s and was thoroughly familiar with all the politics. Illustrator Denslow had been a editorial cartoonist and was used to using animals and other characters to represent political ideas.

2 The Littlefield article interpreted WOZ as a Populist tract. Scholars say that Littlefield correctly identified many of the political references, but that he was mistaken in saying that Baum was promoting Populism. The value of the allegorical interpretation does not hinge on Littlefield’s mistakes—he was a high school history teacher and was not a scholar of politics, economics or the 1890s.

3. Baum himself when asked about the political references did not acknowledge them. He did not actually deny them. He was in the business of writing children’s books and did not want to lose market by having his Oz series politicized. That does not mean that the complex interlocking political dimension of the 1900 book is an illusion. For example the liberation of the little people when the Witch of the East is killed is as political as anything in children's literature.

4. Oz fans are shocked and horrified to learn about the political dimension of the books. That visceral reaction is a rather weak basis for analyzing a work of literature. It is a POV that should be mentioned, but it should not be allowed to crowd out serious research by scholars. Political cartoonists have always recognized the allegories, and of course the 1939 movie has a very strong New Deal undertone.

Was it really an allegory? Arguments pro and con

Baum's family and some researchers of Oz and Baum have rejected the idea that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was purposefully written as an allegory. On the other hand experts on the 1890s largely agree with the allegory interpretation, though they debate exactly what each character stood for. They reject as far-fetched the idea that the complex allegorical structure was entirely an unintended accident. They note that Baum's many later books dealt with Oz with very little or no allegory. There was something different about the original book, which appeared in 1900 during one of the most hotly contested election campaigns in American history. Baum fans do not like any political interpretation, even though the book obviously deals with the politics of the land of Oz and its leaders (Witches and Wizard). To Baumites the that the idea of an intentional allegory seems highly unlikely. However Baum called it a "modern fairy tale" and he certainly knew the politicized nature of traditional English fairy tales. His collaborator, artist W W Denslow, was a political cartoonist who drew hundreds of editorial cartoons. Baum himself had been active as the editor of a political newspaper in the early 1890s in South Dakota, and one of his relatives was a leading suffragist.

• Baum seldom mixed politics into his stories, and when he did, he did not tend to do so subtly. His digs against Standard Oil in The Sea Fairies, for example, are heavy handed to the point of crassness.

• No contemporary reviews of the book alluded to politics. The first time the parallels were drawn was well over 50 years after the events the book supposedly represents. Cartoonist, however, did see the allegory and started using Oz characters to depict politicians such as William Randolph Hearst, called "The Wizard of Ooze" in a 1906 cartoon in Harper's Magazine showing him as the scarecrow.

• Baum's political opinions do not fit neatly with the pro-silverites. Neither was he a classic republican, though there is more evidence to support his republican leanings. In 1890, he bought the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, a staunchly Republican newspaper. One of his editorials shows his Republican sympathies:

We are all members of one great family, the family which saved the Union, the family which stands together as the emblem of prosperity among the nations--Republicanism!

• As for being anti-McKinley, Michael Patrick Hearn, author of The Annotated Wizard of Oz and many important scholarly works on Oz and Baum, unearthed the following poem by Frank Baum, published in a Chicago newspaper in 1896, at the height of populism:

When McKinley gets the chair, boys,

There'll be a jollification

Throughout our happy nation

And contentment everywhere!

Great will be our satisfaction

When the "honest money" faction

Seats McKinley in the chair!

No more the ample crops of grain

That in our granaries have lain

Will seek a purchaser in vain

Or be at mercy of the "bull" or "bear";

Our merchants won't be trembling

At the silverites' dissembling

When McKinley gets the chair!

When McKinley gets the chair, boys,

The magic word "protection"

Will banish all dejection

And free the workingman from every care;

We will gain the world's respect

When it knows our coin's "correct"

And McKinley's in the chair!

If this poem is taken at face value it indicates clear support for McKinley. It is hard to believe Baum would change his politics so drastically by the time he sat down to write The Wizard of Oz, four years later. The last stanza of the poem, however, makes an argument that protectionist tarriffs improve the prosperity of the common man; this could plausibly have been ironic, suggesting the poem was intended as satire. Thus Baum was used to writing political satire, and to commenting on political issues of the day, as was illustrator Denslow.

The strongest point in opposition to Littlefield's original essay is that he, himself, later amended it. Following Hearn's publishing of the poem above, Littlefield responded in the New York Times that the poem was proof that "there is no basis in fact to consider Baum a supporter of turn-of-the-century Populist ideology". Littlefield indeed exaggerated when he saw the book as pro-Populist, when in fact it treats multiple issues simultaneously from several perspectives (while leaving out issues like railroads and imperialism.) Republicans and Democrats, goldbugs and silverites, all loved the book and purchased it. (Cutting the audience in half by making it all pro-silver would have been a costly mistake.) Historians, economists and American Studies scholars have used the allegory theme with great success in class lectures, scholarly articles, and scholarly books.

Translations

The Wizard of Oz has been translated into well over 40 different languages. In some cases, the story proved so popular in other countries that it was adapted to suit the local culture. For instance, in some countries where the Hindu religion is practised, abridged versions of the book were published in which, for religious reasons, the Tin Woodman was replaced with a snake.

The Wizard of Oz was very successfully introduced in the Soviet Union in 1939. Translator Alexander M. Volkov took liberties with his translation, editing as he saw fit, and adding a chapter in which Ellie (his name for Dorothy) is kidnapped by a man-eating Ogre and rescued by her friends. Volkov went on to write his own independent series of sequels to the book, including: Urfin Juice and His Wooden Soldiers, Seven Underground Kings, The Fire God of the Marranes, The Yellow Fog, and The Mystery of the Forgotten Castle. Russian illustrator Leonid Vladimirsky drew the Scarecrow short, round and tubby; his influence is evident in illustrations for translations across the Soviet bloc, where the Scarecrow is almost always portrayed as short, round and tubby. Leonid Vladimirsky has written at least two additional sequels to Alexander Volkov's alternative Oz, or "Magic Land" as it is called in Russian; additional sequels to this alternative Oz have been written by two more Russian authors and one German.

Stage and screen adaptations

Several stage and screen interpretations were made of the book. Most famous among them today is the 1939 film - "The Wizard of Oz" - featuring Judy Garland as Dorothy (this, in turn, has been adapted into two separate stage productions), but the earliest musical version of the book was in fact produced in 1902, and was highly successful at the time. Early film versions of the book include a 1917 film produced by Baum himself, and a 1925 film - "Wizard of Oz" - featuring Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodsman. The Wiz was a hit musical with an all-black cast produced in the 1970s on Broadway; it was later made into a 1978 movie directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow. The most recent musical adaptation of an Oz-related book is the musical Wicked, based on the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire.

The novel was parodied in a Futurama episode, and RahXephon explicitly references the novel. The science fiction film Zardoz also references the book.

The Oz story was cited as a major influence in the 1938 children's radio serial, The Cinnamon bear.

Other adaptations

The most recent adaptation of the story is the comic book Dorothy, launched by Illusive Arts Entertainment in November 2005. Presented in semi-fumetti style using digitally altered photographs, this retelling of Baum's story has been updated to 2005 and "stars" model Catie Fisher as 16-year-old Dorothy Gale, a disaffected youth with dyed hair and piercings who steals her uncle's car and runs away from home ... until she encounters a tornado a is knocked unconscious. She awakens in a strange land and utters: "I don't think this is Kansas ... maybe it's Colorado."

This version of the tale, written by Mark Masterson and "directed and produced" by Greg Mannino is in part a retelling of Baum's tale and in part a retelling of the 1939 movie version of the story, as it incorporates elements of the Judy Garland film.

References

• Dighe, Ranjit S. ed. The Historian's Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory (2002)
• Hearn, Michael Patrick (ed). (2000, 1973) The Annotated Wizard of Oz. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-04992-2
• Green, David L. and Dick Martin. (1977) The Oz Scrapbook. Random House.
• Baum, Frank Joslyn & MacFall, Russell P. (1961) To Please a Child. Chicago: Reilly & Lee Co.
• Riley, Michael O. (1997) Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum. University of Kansas Press ISBN 0-7006-0832-X
• Gardner, Martin & Nye, Russel B. (1994) The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was. East Lansing : Michigan State University Press
• Ritter, Gretchen. "Silver slippers and a golden cap: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and historical memory in American politics." Journal of American Studies (August 1997) vol. 31, no. 2, 171-203.
• Rockoff, Hugh. "The 'Wizard of Oz' as a Monetary Allegory," Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 739-60 online at http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/v98y1990i4p739-60.html

External links

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, available for free via Project Gutenberg
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at American Literature
• Wonderful Wizard of Oz fansite FAQ
• Pros and cons of Oz as an allegory
• German Oz-Fanpage
• [2]] copy of Hugh Rockoff, "The 'Wizard of Oz' as a Monetary Allegory," Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990): 739-60
• [3]] David B. Parker, “The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a "Parable on Populism’” (1994)