Books with title The Poison Jungle

The Jungle is Upton Sinclair’s scathing indictment of the meat packing industry in the early 1900s. This novel, which follows the Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and his family in their doomed struggle for survival in the brutal world of the Chicago stock yards, became a bestseller and changed history. The exposure of the appalling labor conditions and the unsanitary practices led to a public outcry, and eventually reforms, including the Meat Packing Act. At the time, fellow writer Jack London called The Jungle "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery." Eric Schlosser’s more recent assessment is ''The Jungle . . . captures something essential about the American immigrant experience and the workings of a brutal industrial system. It transcends the specifics of one historical era and sadly remains relevant to our own.'' Sinclair’s novel is now read both as literature and as history. Upton Sinclair, journalist, novelist, political activist and gubernatorial candidate, has featured on the cover of Time magazine and is remembered for The Jungle and the wry saying "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper. The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery". Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905, in the Socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905 and November 4, 1905. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. It was published as a book on February 26, 1906, by Doubleday and in a subscribers' edition. A film version of the novel was made in 1914, but it has since become lost.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Worldwide literature classic, among top 100 literary novels of all time. A must read for everybody.In the 1980s, Italo Calvino (the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death) said in his essay "Why Read the Classics?" that "a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say", without any doubt this book can be considered a ClassicThis book is also a Bestseller because as Steinberg defined: "a bestseller as a book for which demand, within a short time of that book's initial publication, vastly exceeds what is then considered to be big sales".

Sinclair had spent about six months investigating the Chicago meatpacking industry for Appeal to Reason, the work which inspired his novel. He intended to "set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profit". The novel featured Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who works in a meat factory in Chicago, his teenaged wife Ona Lukoszaite, and their extended family. Sinclair portrays their mistreatment by Rudkus' employers and the wealthier elements of society. His descriptions of the unsanitary and inhumane conditions that workers suffered served to shock and galvanize readers. Jack London called Sinclair's book "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery". Domestic and foreign purchases of American meat fell by half. Sinclair wrote in Cosmopolitan in October 1906 about The Jungle: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." The novel brought public lobbying for Congressional legislation and government regulation of the industry, including passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. At the time, President Theodore Roosevelt characterized Sinclair as a "crackpot",writing to William Allen White, "I have an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. Three-fourths of the things he said were absolute falsehoods. For some of the remainder there was only a basis of truth." After reading The Jungle, Roosevelt agreed with some of Sinclair's conclusions, but was opposed to legislation that he considered "socialist". He said, "Radical action must be taken to do away with the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist.

Here is the dramatic exposé of the Chicago meatpacking industry at the turn of the century that prompted the investigation by Theodore Roosevelt which culminated in the pure-food legislation of 1906. 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 Sinclairs own creed, Rudkus turns to socialism as a way out.

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, greatly contributing to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair famously said of the public reaction "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery." Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason and it was published as a book by Doubleday in 1906.