Henry Littlefield

Henry M. Littlefield (June 12, 1933 – March 30, 2000) was an American educator, author and historian most notable for his claim that L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a political satire, founding a long tradition of political interpretations of this book. He wrote an essay about his theory for his high-school students in Mount Vernon, New York, and published it[1] in the American Quarterly in 1964.[2][3][4][5]

Littlefield was also a well-known wrestling coach at Mt. Vernon High School and Amherst College. Author John Irving served as an informal assistant coach at Amherst, and mentioned Littlefield in his essay-cum-memoir, "Trying to Save Piggy Sneed." On page 118, Irving wrote, “Henry Littlefield was the coach at Amherst then; Henry was a heavyweight—everything about him was grand.  He was more than expansive, he was eloquent; he was better than good-humored, he was jolly.  Henry was very rare, a kind of Renaissance man among wrestling coaches, and the atmosphere in the Amherst wrestling room was, to Henry’s credit, both aggressive and good-natured—a difficult combination to achieve.”