num_pages: 412
description: One of the most powerful, provocative and enduring novels to expose social injustice ever published in the United States, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle contains an introduction by Ronald Gottesman in Penguin Classics.Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth 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.
language: English
title: The Jungle
titlecomplete: The Jungle
characters: Jurgis, Teta Elzbieta Lukoszaite, Ona Lukoszaite
genres: Fiction, Classics, Politics, Historical, Classic Literature, Banned Books, Historical Fiction, Literature, Novels, School
ratings_count: 142345
places: Chicago, Illinois, Illinois
publisher: Penguin Books