Botts Begins (Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor)

Botts Begins won gold for the 2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Humor!

This is the first volume in a series. Continue the saga with Botts Abroad or purchase volumes 1-5 as a set! 

Welcome to the world of Alexander Botts and Earthworm Tractors, a series of humorous short stories about a bumbling salesman’s trials and tribulations selling crawler tractors. His unusual sales tactics send the machines through impervious swamps, murky lakes, and high snowbanks. His schemes consistently backfire but, in the end, he never fails to close the deal! In this book, Botts talks his way into a job selling Earthworm Tractors for The Farmers’ Friend Tractor Company.

Alexander Botts was created in 1927 by author William Hazlett Upson, and these stories are based on Upson’s brief career as a mechanic for the Caterpillar Tractor Company. For almost half a century, Botts was beloved by Saturday Evening Post readers in more than 100 short stories. This book is the first in a series and will be the only publication to present the collection in its entirety, including five Botts stories that never appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.

Alexander Botts and his Earthworm Tractor will charm readers young and old and entertain with innocent mayhem, timeless humor, and twists of fate.