The Jungle

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Upton Sinclair, 1920 - Fiction - 413 pages
1906 bestseller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.
 

Selected pages

Contents

I
1
II
23
III
35
IV
49
V
63
VI
75
VII
86
VIII
99
XVII
193
XVIII
205
XIX
218
XX
229
XXI
241
XXII
252
XXIII
265
XXIV
277

IX
108
X
118
XI
130
XII
141
XIII
150
XIV
160
XV
168
XVI
183
XXV
292
XXVI
315
XXVII
335
XXVIII
351
XXIX
368
XXX
379
XXXI
394
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About the author (1920)

Upton Sinclair, a lifelong vigorous socialist, first became well known with a powerful muckraking novel, The Jungle, in 1906. Refused by five publishers and finally published by Sinclair himself, it became an immediate bestseller, and inspired a government investigation of the Chicago stockyards, which led to much reform. In 1967 he was invited by President Lyndon Johnson to "witness the signing of the Wholesome Meat Act, which will gradually plug loopholes left by the first Federal meat inspection law" (N.Y. Times), a law Sinclair had helped to bring about. Newspapers, colleges, schools, churches, and industries have all been the subject of a Sinclair attack, analyzing and exposing their evils. Sinclair was not really a novelist, but a fearless and indefatigable journalist-crusader. All his early books are propaganda for his social reforms. When regular publishers boycotted his work, he published himself, usually at a financial loss. His 80 or so books have been translated into 47 languages, and his sales abroad, especially in the former Soviet Union, have been enormous.

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