Showing results by author "Upton Sinclair" in All Categories

"The Fasting Cure" by Upton Sinclair is an intriguing exploration into the health benefits of fasting, first published in 1911. In this work, Sinclair diverges from his better-known investigative and fictional writings to delve into personal health and wellness.

The Jungle is the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Slavic immigrant who marries frail Ona Lukoszaite and seeks security and happiness as a workman in the Chicago stockyards. Once there, he is abused by foremen, his meager savings are filched by real estate sharks, and at every turn he is plagued by the misfortunes arising from poverty, poor working conditions, and disease. Finally, in accordance with Sinclair’s own creed, Rudkus turns to socialism as a way out.

As he did so masterfully in The Jungle, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair interweaves social criticism with human tragedy to create an unforgettable portrait of Southern California's early oil industry. Enraged by the oil scandals of the Harding administration in the 1920s, Sinclair tells a gripping tale of avarice, corruption, and class warfare, featuring a cavalcade of characters, including senators, oil magnates, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist.

A Signature Performance: Oscar nominee and passionate vegan Casey Affleck highlights the more-relevant-than-ever issues of business ethics and food production in Upton Sinclair’s meatpacking industry bombshell.

"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair is a harrowing exposé of the harsh conditions faced by immigrant workers in Chicago's meatpacking industry. This podcast explores Sinclair's powerful critique of capitalism, labor exploitation, and the American Dream, shedding light on the struggle for workers' rights.

Europe, 1940. As war rages across the continent, America watches anxiously from the sidelines. And President Franklin Roosevelt has been keeping an even closer eye on developments in the Third Reich. At the president’s personal request, Lanny Budd gained the confidence of the Nazi high command and began transmitting valuable information back to the White House. Espionage is a dangerous game, however, and Presidential Agent 103 soon finds himself a target of the French Resistance fighters he is attempting to assist.

Wide Is the Gate followed the 1943 Pulitzer Prize-winning Dragon’s Teeth and introduces Lanny as a secret double agent fighting the Nazis as a supporter of the resistance in Germany. Lanny is living in England with his wife of almost five years, Irma Barnes, the twenty-three-million-dollar heiress. But Lanny is conflicted continuously in his heart and soul for the workers and social justice. He attempts to commit to Irma, to “behave” himself and lead a normal aristocratic life.

In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd’s financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed. But the devastation the collapse has wrought on ordinary citizens has only strengthened Lanny’s socialist ideals. In Germany to visit relatives, Lanny encounters a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and jingoism. But Lanny’s gravest fear is the threat a national socialist government poses to the German Jewish family of Hansi, the musician husband of Lanny’s sister, Bess.

In 1925, the greatest muckraking journalist and advocate for the working man, Upton Sinclair, believed that the cause in which he believed needed to be clearly and concisely explained - in plain English - for the benefit of the American worker. He contended that the elected government was run by the financial supporters of the political parties; that big business, with the support of the courts and legislatures and media at all levels, was exploiting and mistreating workers, and focusing their efforts every day to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Prolific author and political activist Upton Sinclair throws the upheaval of the early twentieth century into sharp relief in "100%: The Story of a Patriot". In a matter of instants, a bomb blast transmutes Peter Gudge's entire existence into chaos, and in the resulting pandemonium, he's forced to reexamine all of his values and beliefs.

The First World War brought an abrupt end to Lanny Budd’s idyllic youth. Now, in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, he barely recognizes the beloved Europe of his boyhood. At the start of his career as an international art dealer, Lanny travels to Italy and witnesses the brutal charisma of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Meanwhile, in Germany, the failed Beer Hall Putsch led by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party strikes an ominous note foreshadowing the devastation to come.

Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.

Upton Sinclair was first and foremost the most eminent and impactful muckraking journalist of the early 20th century (The Jungle - 1906: precipitated meaningful and permanent improvements in the safety and purity of the food we eat).

Our protagonist comes to New York as a lawyer seeking to make his name and build a career. His younger brother has come before him and has already been successful in working his way into the inner circles of the High Society. The younger brother introduces him to the moguls with their extraordinary fortunes, amassed by owners of the Trusts, the Monopolies, the Banks, and the Financiers. With all the money in the world has come all the power. And, with all the money and the power has come the grotesque excess and the decadence and the moral rot.

Wall Street is corrupt and has been corrupt for generations. There are to be found the Great Men shuffling millions (and now billions) from one bank, one trust, one syndicate, and one scheme to the next. Wealth brings power and with the power comes more wealth. Upton Sinclair tells us this tale through the eyes of a Wall Street lawyer in 1906. A man who is "in Society" but not truly "of Society". A man named Montague begins to bit by bit to see the true rape and pillage of the economy which is going on day by day.

Upton Sinclair, the muckraking giant of 20th century journalism and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Jungle, turns his critical eye upon the world of religion. Mind you, he is not critical of God nor of the teachings of Christ, but of the organized religions throughout history and of our times.

From the author of the landmark book of investigative “muckraking” journalism, The Jungle comes only the second book by Sinclair to be produced as an audiobook for commercial distribution: The Brass Check. Upton Sinclair turns his critical eye and his sharp pen on the corruption and lies of the media that ruled the day 100 years ago - the newspapers, the magazines, and the wire services. He lays bare their pervasive collusion with big industrial, financial, and political interests.

A Lithuanian family comes to America to seek a living. This book's ghastly and often brutal descriptions of work in the Chicago meat stockyards and the grim consequences of extreme poverty forced Congress to pass laws reforming work conditions and food safety standards in the United States. It also helped to stir up the Socialist movement in this country.

A young Lithuanian immigrant, full of hope, arrives in Chicago in 1904 to work in the stockyards. He and his family soon find themselves processed like the very cattle they slaughter, by the system they dreamed would save them.

Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus has invested every last hope in achieving a prosperous new start in a new country. But the only job open to him - in the appalling stockyards of Packingtown, Chicago - will become a brutal, dispiriting, and dangerous challenge to his pride, his family, his life, and his faith in the American Dream. A scathing condemnation of capitalism, corporate corruption, and the exploitation of the working class, The Jungle was a sensation when first published. It stands as one the greatest and most influential proletarian novels ever written.