Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat (1957) and Green Eggs and Ham (1960) remain two of the best-selling English children’s books of all time. His fantastical characters and sing-song rhyming have stoked childhood imaginations for decades. But before he became an acclaimed author, Dr. Seuss was also a political cartoonist, creating images that commented on isolationism in the lead-up to World War II—and which are also deeply resonant with our current moment. has long stood as a beloved figure of the American experience:(1957) and(1960) remain two of the best-selling English children’s books of all time. His fantastical characters and sing-song rhyming have stoked childhood imaginations for decades. But before he became an acclaimed author, Dr. Seuss was also a political cartoonist, creating images that commented on isolationism in the lead-up to World War II—and which are also deeply resonant with our current moment.

Beginning just after the start of World War II, Dr. Seuss (whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel) created more than 400 political cartoons for the liberal-leaning New York tabloid PM. But due to the newspaper’s relatively small readership (at five cents a copy it was many times more expensive than other papers of the day) and that Dr. Seuss sometimes downplayed his political leanings, these works remained little known.

Even the artist’s widow, Audrey Geisel, was unaware of her late husband’s political cartoons until the publication of historian Richard H. Minear’s 1999 book Dr. Seuss Goes to War. Minear says that Geisel came up to him after a lecture on the book, which resurfaced some 200 of Dr. Seuss’s political cartoons, and expressed her surprise.

A number of those cartoons, which have resurfaced in recent weeks, focus on the 1940s isolationist movement known as “America First.” The phrase has more recently been marshalled by the Trump administration as a slogan for its populist foreign policy agenda, which puts the interest of American people before all others.