Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Monthly Newsletter

Join Now

The Jungle

The Jungle

Author(s): Upton Sinclair

Location(s): Chicago

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical

Era(s): Turn of the 20th Century

Location

Content

Upton Sinclair’s dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the twentieth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American Dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, and condemned for Sinclair’s unabashed promotion of Socialism and unionisation as a solution to the exploitation of workers, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then President Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection act, which has tremendous impact to this day.

Review this Book

To review this book, please

Log in

Book Reviews

Lead Review

“The Jungle” is an expose of the meat processing industry in Chicago by interweaving a novel around the salient facts of working conditions which were brought to light in the Packingtown workers’ strike of...

Read review